FAI (Femoro-acetabular Impingement) & Karate

My personal experience with FAI and what you should know about this condition

Archive for June, 2008

Dr visit & more therapy

I visited the surgeon a couple weeks ago.  He basically said “keep up the good work.”  I have definitely made improvements but I feel like I should be much further along than I am.  My left side is definitely worse than my right, more in terms of flexibility than strength but also in terms of pain levels.  There are two main reasons for this:

1) During the time I was supposed to be getting into my later-stage therapy on the left side, I was recovering from my right hip surgery.  So I couldn’t keep the pace I had been on and ended up losing flexibility as I spent so much time supporting all my weight standing on the left side while minimizing the weight on my right leg.

2) I do not have much cartilage left on either side but much less on my left.  So I will never be completely without pain in my left hip.

I have been gradually increasing the length and intensity of my karate workouts and have been doing a little more biking.  I will be taking part in a fund-raising 50-mile bike ride in about a month.  So I will be riding more in the coming weeks to prepare for that.  As it stands now, I feel the reduced strength on my left side  and also pain in my left hip but it is not bad when riding at a medium pace (faster than normal/casual riders but not as fast as those who bike every day and have bikes that cost 10 times what mine is worth)  for < 10 miles.  We will soon see how things go when I increase to 10-15 miles per ride within the next week…