Hip Pain
The hip is the engine of the whole body. When it quits, the low back and the knee quietly pick up its work, and both of them are worse at it. Dr. Andrew Allen evaluates the hip properly, including the parts nobody checks.
Over 20 years of experience · Wheat Ridge, Arvada, Lakewood, Golden & West DenverYou are not sure it is even your hip
People point to their low back and say hip. They point to their glute and say hip. They point to the outside of their thigh and say hip. Meanwhile the actual hip joint sits deep in your groin, which is nowhere near where most people point. That confusion is not your fault, and it is exactly why hip problems get treated as back problems for years before anyone tests the hip itself. The good news: the hip is one of the most testable joints in the body. Twenty minutes of the right examination usually settles it.
How hip pain actually shows up
Location matters enormously here, because four completely different problems all get called hip pain:
Deep in the groin
A pinch or ache deep in the front crease, worse with squatting or getting out of a car. This is the actual hip joint talking.
The C sign
You cup your hand around the side of your hip in a C shape to show where it hurts. Almost everyone who does this has a true hip joint problem.
Pain on the outside
Right on the bony point. Cannot lie on that side at night. That is usually the tendons and bursa on the outside, not the joint.
Deep glute ache
Buried in the buttock, sometimes traveling. Could be the hip, could be the SI joint, could be the piriformis. See lower back pain and sciatica.
Cannot put socks on
Or cross your legs, or get into the car cleanly. Loss of hip rotation shows up in life long before it shows up in sport.
Clicking, catching, or a pinch
Something snapping in the front or side of the hip, or a sharp catch at end range. Worth evaluating rather than ignoring.
Stiff in the morning
Locked for the first twenty minutes, better once moving, worse again after sitting. Classic joint pattern.
Your back hurts, not your hip
You came in for your back. The hip is why. This happens constantly and it is one of the most valuable findings we make.
The knee on that side hurts
Hip problems refer to the knee reliably, especially in the front of the thigh. See knee pain.
When the engine quits, everything else pays
Your hip is built to be the most powerful joint you own. It is supposed to supply extension, rotation, and force. When it stops, that work does not disappear, it just gets reassigned to structures that cannot do it. These are the root causes Dr. Allen is actively ruling in or out:
Loss of hip extension
Eight hours of sitting a day shortens the hip flexors and teaches the hip to live in flexion. Now you cannot finish a stride from the hip, so your low back arches to fake it, thousands of times a day. This is the most common finding we make, and it is why so much low back pain is a hip problem.
Loss of internal rotation
The first motion a hip loses and the one nobody tests. When it goes, rotation gets stolen from the knee below and the lumbar spine above, neither of which rotates well.
Glute medius weakness
The side stabilizer that keeps your pelvis level on one leg. When it fails, the pelvis drops, the outer hip tendons get compressed, and the knee dives inward. One weak muscle, three problems.
Gluteal tendinopathy and bursitis
The classic outer hip pain that cannot lie on that side. Almost always a compression and capacity issue rather than an inflammation-out-of-nowhere issue, which changes the treatment completely.
Impingement and labral irritation
Bony shapes and a cartilage rim that can pinch at end range. Common in athletes, and specific testing tells us whether it is in play.
Hip osteoarthritis
Real, and it has a specific pattern of motion loss. Also worth knowing that conservative care improves function in a great many arthritic hips, because we change how the joint is loaded.
SI joint dysfunction
Sits right next door and imitates hip pain constantly. It is a different joint with a different treatment, which is why differentiating them matters.
Lumbar referral
The lumbar spine refers into the hip and groin. Any hip evaluation that skips the low back is only half an evaluation. Related: herniated discs.
Ankle restriction from below
If the ankle will not bend, the hip changes how it loads to compensate. The chain runs both directions.
Load spike
You added mileage, vertical, or a new sport faster than the tissue adapted. Common in athletes and active adults, and very fixable once identified.
How Dr. Allen figures out what is actually wrong
You get evaluated and treated on day one. Not a clipboard and a handshake and a see-you-next-week.
We find out where it actually hurts
Not the word hip, the location. Groin, outside, or glute are three different problems, and getting that right in the first two minutes changes everything that follows.
We measure rotation
Internal and external rotation, both sides, compared. This is the test that gets skipped everywhere and reveals more than anything else. A hip that has lost twenty degrees of internal rotation is a hip that has been causing problems for years.
We watch you move
Single-leg stance, squat, gait, hip extension. Whether your pelvis holds level or drops tells us about the glute. Whether you extend from the hip or the low back tells us about the compensation.
Orthopedic testing
Specific tests to differentiate the joint from the tendons from the SI joint from lumbar referral. Impingement testing when the picture warrants it. This is what separates a real diagnosis from a guess.
We connect it to your life
Your commute, your desk, your mileage, your ski season, your sleep position. The cause is usually sitting in your calendar.
You get treated the same day
You leave your first visit having actually been treated, and knowing in plain English what is going on. If your case needs imaging or an orthopedic opinion, Dr. Allen will say so directly.
Colorado is hard on a hip
We would not live anywhere else. But the Front Range lifestyle has a signature, and after twenty years Dr. Allen can usually guess your hobby from your movement pattern.
The Denver commute
Wadsworth, Kipling, I-70, then eight hours at a desk. Sitting is a hip in flexion, and the hip adapts to what you do most. Most people here spend more time seated than doing anything else.
Cycling on Clear Creek Trail
Thousands of pedal strokes with the hip never fully extending. It is sitting with cardio attached, and hip flexors love it for all the wrong reasons.
Ski and snowboard season
Deep sustained flexion for six hours plus rotation under load. Then a two-hour seated drive home on I-70. The hip never gets to open up all day.
Fourteener descents
Hours of eccentric loading and lateral control on uneven ground. The glute medius has never worked harder, and it will let you know.
Clear Creek Trail miles
Repetitive single-plane running. Great for fitness, and almost no lateral or rotational demand, which is exactly where hips get weak.
Trail running on uneven ground
The opposite problem. Constant lateral correction that demands a glute medius most desk workers have not used in years.
Gardening season
Wheat Ridge earned the Carnation City name honestly. Hours of squatting and kneeling in deep hip flexion, then standing up and wondering why.
Snow shoveling
Loaded rotation from the hip, in the cold, repeatedly. When the hip will not rotate, the low back does, and that is how driveways generate back pain.
Wadsworth and Kipling traffic
Hip and pelvis injuries from collisions are common and often masked by the more obvious complaints. See our car accident injury care.
How we treat hip pain
Restoring the hip usually resolves complaints in two other places at the same time. Dr. Allen builds care around what your evaluation actually found.
Chiropractic adjustments
Restoring motion to the hip joint itself, plus the SI joint and lumbar segments that have been compensating for it.
Soft tissue therapy
Hands-on work across the hip flexors, deep rotators, glutes, and TFL, addressing the tissue that is holding the hip closed.
Dry needling
Thin monofilament needles into the deep glutes, piriformis, and psoas that hands genuinely cannot reach. For deep hip and glute pain this is often the difference maker.
Cupping therapy
Decompression-based soft tissue work that may help circulation and tissue mobility across the hip and glute region.
Therapeutic exercise
Glute medius control, hip extension, and rotation. A short, specific set aimed at the deficit we measured, because we measured it.
Functional movement assessment
The reassessment loop. We re-measure your rotation so you can see the change in degrees rather than in vibes.
Hip pain FAQ
Is it my hip or my back?
It is one of the most common questions we get and one of the most answerable. Pain deep in the groin with lost rotation points to the hip. Pain that travels down the leg past the knee points to the back. Plenty of people have both, which is exactly why every hip evaluation here tests both.
Why does my hip hurt in my knee?
The hip joint refers pain into the front of the thigh and knee through a shared nerve supply. It is a well-documented pattern. Knee pain with a healthy-looking knee and a stiff hip is a hip problem until proven otherwise.
Do I need a hip replacement?
Most people asking do not, at least not yet. Arthritis on imaging does not automatically mean surgery, and conservative care improves function in many arthritic hips because it changes the loading. Some hips genuinely need replacing, and Dr. Allen will tell you honestly if yours looks like one.
I stretch my hip flexors constantly and it never helps. Why?
Usually because stretching a muscle that is short because it is being asked to work does not change why it is working. If your glutes are not extending the hip, your hip flexor stays on. Change the reason and the stretch stops being necessary.
My outer hip hurts at night. Is that bursitis?
Often it is called that, and it is usually more of a tendon compression problem than a pure inflammation problem. That distinction matters, because the classic advice to stretch it by crossing the leg over actually compresses the tendon further and can make it worse.
Can a chiropractor treat hips?
Extremities are within chiropractic scope, and the hip in particular benefits from someone treating the low back, SI joint, hip, and knee as one chain, because that is how it actually works.
Will I have to come three times a week forever?
No. There are no long-term contracts and no forced treatment plans here. The goal is to get you out of pain, teach you what caused it, and send you back to your life.
Do you take my insurance?
Coverage questions are best answered directly. Call or text (303) 351-0744, or check the FAQ.
Get your engine back.
Fix the hip and the back and the knee often stop complaining too. Get a real evaluation from a doctor with twenty years of hands, and find out what is actually going on.
Lakeside Spine & Injury Center · 6073 W 44th Ave #101, Wheat Ridge, CO 80033 · Proudly serving Wheat Ridge, Arvada, Lakewood, Golden, Edgewater, Applewood, and West Denver.