Have you ever heard a sound emanate from your hip that sounded like you just poured a bowl of Rice Krispie cereal? A snap in the front of your hip when you stand up from your desk? A crackle when you bend over to pick something up? A pop when you laid in that weird but comfy position on the couch and then got up?
A snap, crackle or pop isn’t necessarily cause for immediate alarm, as it’s normal for our body to make sounds, but if you’ve ever had this experience in addition to pain, there can be a variety of reasons for it.
Common Hip Issues Causing a Snap, Crackle, or Pop
- Labral Tear
The labrum of the hip is a ligament that sits in the socket of the ischium (bone of the pelvis) and allows the ball of the femur to move freely on it without flying out of the socket. It offers both adherence of the bones and shock absorption to ensure the bones aren’t smacking together with every step you take.
When the labrum tears, it’s either from one great force that caused it to fail in that moment or from repeated smaller forces causing it to slowly shave down and tear over time. This could sound like a crackle or pop when you’re walking or if you take a step too far forward. If left untreated, you’re at a high risk of a full tear of the labrum which will lead to development of osteoarthritis in the hip as a result of the bones constantly hitting into one another. How Physical Therapy Helps: Physical therapy doesn’t heal the torn up tissue, but instead provides your body with the strength and proper mechanics (which you didn’t have to begin with that caused the tearing) to ensure that the ligament doesn’t tear further and that your muscles will take the force instead of the ligament. - Tendonitis
Tendinitis occurs when a muscle isn’t strong enough to do its job to move your leg and all of its weight into the position your brain is telling it to go. Instead, it’s like a bad coworker who pushes its responsibilities onto someone else. In this case, that’s the tendon. We didn’t go over the tendons above in our anatomy section, so here’s the rundown: tendons are tough, rope-like connective tissue that connect a muscle to a bone. If you look at the picture with the muscles across the hip, all of the white spots at the ends of the muscles are tendons.
Tendons can take on great forces when the muscle isn’t doing its job and are there as a failsafe when the muscle is weak to make sure it doesn’t just detach from the bone entirely. Relying on your backup guy constantly is costly. It puts a lot of stress on the tendon which causes it to get irritated because it’s handling stresses of someone else’s (the muscle’s) job. So that snapping sensation you feel along the front of your hip if you move your leg to the side? When you stretch your leg out straight for the first time after sitting for your full 8 hour work day? That’s the tendon altering you that it’s stressed and irritated about the muscle not being strong enough for the forces you’re putting on them as a unit.
- Weakness/Instability
A snap, crackle, or pop can be a result of a muscle or muscle group weakness resulting in instability of the hip joint. Remember how I said the hip is inherently unstable because of its ball and socket structure? That’s true at the deepest level, except for the fact that we have all 21 muscles and some ligaments and tendons making it stable. If we have weak muscles, then the tendons are doing more of the work to help keep the hip stable. If the tendons get tired of the stress on them, then the ligaments are now doing more of the work to help keep the hip stable. After the ligaments fail, there’s very little help that the hip joint has in maintaining its proper posture.
Come to Physical Therapy!
If you’re experiencing pain with snapping, crackling, or popping in your hip come see our Doctors of Physical Therapy here at Loudoun Sports Therapy Center. They’ll spend an hour with you during an evaluation to determine the source of your pain and sounds, educate you about your condition, and create a plan with you to get back to the activities you love and maintain healthy hips!
Loudoun Sports Therapy Center proudly offers physical therapy near you! Our clinic, centrally located in Sterling, VA allows us to serve local towns and cities of; Sterling, Potomac Falls, Ashburn, Broadlands, Herndon, Reston, Great Falls, Chantilly, Leesburg, Lansdowne, Manassas and more!
