Hip condition
Hip impingement — femoroacetabular impingement, or FAI — is a hip whose ball and socket meet at the edges rather than gliding cleanly past one another. It is a shape, not an injury, and that distinction runs through everything on this page: plenty of people have impingement-shaped hips and never feel a thing, which is why an X-ray alone cannot diagnose this condition. What matters is whether that shape is producing symptoms in your hip — and if it is, whether the damage it causes can be halted before the cartilage pays for it.
Tap any that apply to you — this is guidance, not a diagnosis, but it tells you how quickly to act.
Some of those want assessing promptly. Pain that persists regardless of position, especially with fever, is never assumed to be mechanical. And a hip that gave way after a forced movement may have damaged the labrum or cartilage — worth knowing early, because timing changes what treatment can achieve.
Good news — nothing urgent on that list. Impingement symptoms that come on with deep bending and settle with rest are the ordinary pattern, and rehabilitation resolves a good proportion of them. Getting the shape measured properly still tells you what you are dealing with.
Femoroacetabular impingement comes in two forms, and many hips have a measure of both. Knowing which yours is shapes the treatment:
The most effective early change is simply staying out of the pinch. Deep squats, low sofas, sitting with knees higher than hips, aggressive hip stretching and long spells folded into a car or a plane seat all drive the two surfaces together, so removing them for a few weeks frequently settles matters more than rest ever does. Note that stretching is on that list: pulling the hip into deeper flexion or rotation to “loosen it off” presses precisely the surfaces that are already in contact, which is why the yoga-and-stretch approach so often makes an impinging hip angrier. What genuinely helps is strength and control — gluteal and deep stabiliser work, trunk control, and retraining the way you squat, lunge and turn so that the hip works in the middle of its range rather than at the limit. Keep training with what does not provoke it: flat walking, cycling with the seat raised, swimming without breaststroke legs. And get the shape measured, because it tells you whether you are managing a temporary flare or a structural pattern that will keep returning.
The stage matters more than the scan — tap the one that fits:
This is the best stage to be seen at, and the one most people skip. Symptoms confined to sport usually respond to load management and a targeted strength programme, and knowing your hip’s shape now tells you how to train for the next decade rather than guessing.
Once daily movements provoke it, the hip is telling you the contact is frequent. Rehabilitation is still the first line and works for many, but this is the point to have the labrum and cartilage looked at properly — what is happening inside the joint changes the recommendation.
Pain during sitting and walking suggests the joint surface is involved, not just the rim. That does not automatically mean surgery, but it does mean imaging and a frank conversation about what reshaping the bone can and cannot restore at this stage.
Hip impingement treatment works up a ladder, and a good number of people never need to reach the top of it:
Tap each card to reveal the truth:
Hip impingement — femoroacetabular impingement, or FAI — describes a hip where the ball and socket make contact at the edges instead of gliding freely. Two shapes cause it: extra bone on the neck of the femur so the ball is not perfectly round, and a socket rim that covers slightly too much. Either way, deep bending pinches the tissues at the rim, and over years that repeated contact frays the labrum and the cartilage beneath it.
The cam shape largely develops during the adolescent growth years, and is more common in people who played high-impact pivoting sports through that period — football, basketball, hockey and similar. The socket-side shape is more often something you are simply born with. Neither is caused by anything you did wrong in adulthood, and neither is a sign of premature ageing.
For many people, hip impingement treatment starts and ends with a properly built rehabilitation programme: strengthening the muscles that control the hip, retraining movement so the joint spends less time at its pinching end range, and temporarily removing the positions that provoke it. Keyhole surgery to reshape the bone and repair the labrum is offered when symptoms persist despite that work, and it produces better results before cartilage damage accumulates.
Three things have to line up: symptoms, examination findings and imaging. Groin pain with deep flexion and rotation, a test that reproduces it, restricted inward rotation, and X-rays showing the shape. Imaging on its own is not enough, because impingement-shaped hips are common in people who have no pain at all. It is the combination that makes the diagnosis, not any single scan.
The cam shape is one of the more strongly established risk factors for hip osteoarthritis, because it concentrates load and shear at the rim where cartilage is thinnest. That said, having the shape is not a sentence — many people with it never develop arthritis. It is the reason we take symptomatic impingement seriously in young hips rather than waiting, since the joint you protect at thirty is the one you still have at sixty.
Same-day appointments are usually available. Call or book online — our team will take it from there.
