Most hip pain improves with a combination of targeted exercises, simple habit changes, and short-term pain relief strategies. The key is figuring out what’s causing your pain, because the location alone tells you a lot about what’s going on and which approach will work best.
What the Location of Your Pain Tells You
Hip pain that hits the side of your hip, especially near the bony point you can feel when you press, is most often greater trochanteric pain syndrome (sometimes called bursitis). It gets worse when you walk, sit for long stretches, or sleep on that side. If pressing on the outer hip reproduces the pain, that’s a strong signal.
Pain in the front of your hip that came on gradually, especially if you’re over 50, points toward osteoarthritis. You’ll notice it after sitting or walking for a while, and your hip may feel stiff when you rotate it. This is the most common cause of front-of-hip pain in older adults.
Front-of-hip pain that started suddenly, particularly during sports like soccer, basketball, dance, or gymnastics, may be a labral tear. The hallmark is mechanical symptoms: popping, catching, or clicking when you move the joint. If your hip locks or catches during activity, that’s worth getting checked out rather than managing on your own.
Exercises That Build Lasting Relief
Strengthening and stretching the muscles around your hip is the single most effective long-term strategy for reducing hip pain. The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons recommends a daily conditioning program that targets flexibility and hip stability. These five exercises cover the essentials:
- Standing IT band stretch: Cross one leg behind the other and lean your hips away from the back leg until you feel a stretch along the outside of your hip. Do 2 sets of 4 repetitions daily.
- Seated rotation stretch: Sit with one ankle crossed over the opposite knee and gently press the raised knee toward the floor. This opens up the deep rotators of the hip. Do 2 sets of 4 reps daily.
- Knee to chest: Lie on your back and pull one knee toward your chest, holding for a few seconds. This stretches the hip flexors and lower back. Do 2 sets of 4 reps daily.
- Clamshell: Lie on your side with knees bent, feet together, and lift the top knee while keeping your feet stacked. This strengthens the muscles that stabilize your pelvis. Do 1 set of 10 to 15 reps per side, daily.
- Hip abduction (standing or lying): Lift your leg out to the side against gravity or with a light weight. Start with 8 reps and work up to 12. When that gets easy, add one pound and drop back to 8 reps. Do this 2 to 3 days per week.
Consistency matters more than intensity. The stretches are meant to be done daily, and most people notice improvement within a few weeks. If any exercise sharpens your pain rather than producing a mild stretch or muscle fatigue, skip it and try again after a few days.
Quick Relief When Pain Flares
For a flare-up, over-the-counter ibuprofen at 200 to 400 mg every 4 to 6 hours (up to 1,200 mg per day) can reduce both pain and inflammation. Ice works well for acute flare-ups: 15 to 20 minutes wrapped in a cloth, applied to the painful area. Heat tends to work better for stiffness, particularly before stretching or exercise.
If you have lateral hip pain that worsens at night, avoid sleeping on the affected side. Sleeping on your back with a pillow under your knees, or on your unaffected side with a pillow between your knees, helps keep your hips aligned and takes pressure off irritated tissue. A firm, thick pillow works better than a thin one for keeping your knees properly spaced.
Sitting Habits That Make Hip Pain Worse
Prolonged sitting is one of the most common aggravators of hip pain, and most people sit in ways that compress the hip joint or shorten the hip flexors. Your feet should be flat on the ground (or on a footrest) with your knees bent at roughly 90 degrees. If your chair is too low, your hips end up flexed past 90 degrees, which increases pressure on the front of the joint and can worsen impingement-type pain.
Getting up every 30 to 45 minutes matters as much as your seated posture. Even a brief stand and a few steps allow your hip flexors to lengthen and restore circulation to the joint. If your work keeps you in a chair for hours, set a timer. This one change alone makes a noticeable difference for many people with chronic hip stiffness.
How Weight Affects Your Hips
Every pound of body weight translates to roughly six pounds of force on your hip joints during walking. That ratio means losing even 10 pounds removes about 60 pounds of pressure from each hip with every step. For people carrying extra weight who have hip osteoarthritis, this is one of the most impactful changes available. It won’t reverse cartilage damage, but it meaningfully reduces the mechanical load that drives pain.
Do Glucosamine and Chondroitin Work?
Despite their popularity, glucosamine and chondroitin supplements do not reduce hip or knee pain more than a placebo. A large network meta-analysis published in The BMJ compared these supplements against placebo across multiple trials. The pain reductions were tiny, less than half a centimeter on a 10-centimeter pain scale, and fell below the threshold for a clinically meaningful difference. The researchers concluded that these supplements should be discouraged for new patients. If you’ve been taking them and feel they help, a placebo effect may be at work, but the evidence doesn’t support spending money on them.
What About Hip Injections?
Corticosteroid injections, hyaluronic acid injections, and platelet-rich plasma injections are all commonly offered for hip osteoarthritis. The evidence, however, is sobering. A systematic review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that none of these injections provided significantly better pain relief or improved function compared to a simple saline (saltwater) injection at either 2 to 4 months or 6 months. All groups, including the saline group, showed clinically meaningful improvement from their starting point. This suggests that the act of injecting fluid into the joint, or simply the passage of time and the placebo effect, accounts for most of the benefit people experience.
That doesn’t mean injections are useless in every situation. Some people get temporary relief that helps them participate in physical therapy or stay active. But they’re not a long-term fix, and it’s worth knowing the evidence before committing to repeated rounds.
When Surgery Becomes an Option
Hip arthroscopy is a minimally invasive procedure typically used for labral tears and certain structural problems. Recovery is faster than a full hip replacement, but the failure rate is worth understanding. Within two years, about 18.6% of patients required some type of additional surgery: 11.4% needed a reoperation, and 7.2% ultimately converted to a total hip replacement. Most of those failures, about 71%, happened within the first year. If you make it through the first year without complications, your odds improve significantly, with only a 5.3% revision rate in the second year.
Total hip replacement is generally reserved for advanced osteoarthritis that hasn’t responded to conservative treatment. Modern replacements have high satisfaction rates, and most people return to walking within weeks, though full recovery takes several months. The decision typically comes down to how much your pain limits daily life after you’ve genuinely tried exercise, weight management, and activity modification.
Signs That Need Immediate Attention
Most hip pain is manageable at home, but certain combinations of symptoms signal something more serious. Seek emergency care if you experience severe hip pain after a fall or injury, sudden intense hip pain with no obvious cause, numbness or tingling in the hip or leg after trauma, inability to bear weight, a hip that’s visibly swollen and warm to the touch, skin color changes around the hip, or hip pain accompanied by fever. These can indicate fractures, infections, or vascular problems that need urgent evaluation.