Gymnastics and Exercises for Coxarthrosis
At the early stages of the condition free movement is hampered by the changing quality of the «“lubrication”» inside articular cavities – it gets viscous and thick. Because of it, the articular cartilage dries out and its surface gets covered with small cracks and becomes rough. Then this leads to deformities of articular bones, pain, and limitation of movement. As a rule, coxarthrosis is accompanied by muscular atrophy in the diseased leg. The leg can get significantly shorter, the person starts limping while walking and needs a walking stick to lessen the load.
Gymnastics is quite effective at first stages of the condition.
It is not recommended to do gymnastics only when feeling strong pain. Eventually gymnastics contributes to normalisation of blood flow, articular mobility comes back and pain goes away. Besides no or little medicine is needed in this case which helps conserve other organs and systems of the body.
Gymnastics can be practiced at home or in a polyclinic with an instructor. Swimming is a really effective exercise. While being in the water, the coxofemoral joint is hardly tense and that’s why the muscles supporting the joint and also abdominal and back muscles can be properly exercised.
You can do the following simple gymnastic exercises at home:
1. Lying on the belly, the arms stretched along the body, smoothly raise your legs alternatively not bending the knees. Fix the upper position of the leg for 30 seconds. It is really important to make sure that not only hip and bottom muscles are working but also that the corpus is not moving and the coxal bones and belly are pressed against the floor. It is enough to do one lift per leg. The dynamic variant of the exercise is the one with the one or two-second fixation of the leg with 10-12 repetitions.
3. Lie on the right side. The left leg is raised and fixed for about 30 seconds. Then do the same with the other leg on the other side.
After gymnastics do self-massage – rub the front and lateral muscles of the hips from knees upwards till you feel warmth (about 3 minutes). Then smoothly stroke the muscles bottom-up. Other more intensive exercises are to be done only at the doctor’s prescription in order to avoid complications.
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