Is groin pain affecting your sporting endeavours?

The pelvis and related attachments is a complex unit of moving parts that enable us to transfer weight across the body during our normal everyday activities and sports. The groin muscles are located in the inner thigh region attaching onto the pubic bone. A particular source of confusion with this condition relates to the numerous names utilised to describe pain in the groin region “osteitis pubis”, “adductor tendinopathy”, “adductor enthesopathy” to name a few.

In 2014, world leaders in groin pain met in Doha, Qatar, to discuss and figure out an effective manner of grouping types of groin pain. This is hugely beneficial for our clients as a specific diagnosis will change the treatment approach and the more specific we can be to your issue the more targeted the treatment and better the results.

The possible causes of hip or groin pain are as follows:

• Adductor related groin pain
• Iliopsoas related groin pain
• Inguinal related groin pain
• Pubic related groin pain
• Hip related groin pain

Groin pain is a common sporting related injury, primarily affecting the football codes of AFL and soccer. The injury prevalence rates vary from 8-15% of the male sporting population with the highest incidence attributed to adductor related groin pain. A vast majority of people can continue in their chosen sporting activities with groin pain but there is a subgroup of people that report their groin pain affects their normal everyday activities and can stop them from participating in sport.

Fortunately, good quality studies have shown that up to 80% of people who undergo a thorough rehabilitation program designed for longstanding groin pain can return to the same level of sport. However, this can take from 6-20 weeks to get results. If we relate this information back to understanding strengthening principles, any changes in tendon are expected take at least 12 weeks. The positive information to take out of this research is that like most tissues in our body, the groin muscle/tendon complex responds to exercise as long as it is the right kind of exercise.

If you’d like an assessment or rehabilitation program made to get you back in action giver us a call on 9596 9110.