Why do you still get buttock pain or hip pain radiating down the leg when you do yoga?

Have you ever wondered why you still get buttock pain or hip pain radiating down the leg even though you do yoga? Surely stretching a lot should stop the pain, so why does it hurt? What is really going on?

    These days, many people are paying more attention to their health and doing more activities and exercise to look after themselves. One that everyone knows and may have tried is yoga.

Yoga brings body and mind together to create balance in the body. It trains concentration, makes the body and mind calmer and better, and makes you more energetic.  Yoga also has physical benefits: it improves posture and balance, burns energy to help control weight, relieves some types of muscle pain, and increases the flexibility of the body and muscles. 

    From this brief overview, yoga seems to have nothing but benefits. However, doing too much of any activity is not good, and yoga is no exception. Yoga certainly has many great benefits, but overdoing it can also cause harm. Practising yoga often increases muscle flexibility and makes the body more flexible, but if we stretch our muscles repeatedly without doing other exercise as well, the muscles are lengthened and gradually lose muscle mass density, which makes them weak. This can lead to muscle pain because the muscles are not strong enough. 

    Buttock or hip pain radiating down the leg is caused by the sciatic nerve in the buttock near the hip being compressed or irritated by the piriformis muscle, which is located in the buttock near the hip. This leads to pain in the buttock radiating down the leg because the piriformis muscle becomes so tight that it compresses the nerve. In this case, the problem is caused by the muscle being too tight, but a muscle that is too weak can cause the same problem. In people who do yoga regularly without other exercise, muscle flexibility is affected: the muscles are stretched by yoga but are not strengthened by exercise, so the muscles are lengthened and muscle mass decreases. The muscles are weak, with less muscle mass than normal. As a result, when we do activities such as sitting, walking or running, we have no muscles to support us during those activities, so the nerve is squeezed or irritated, causing buttock or hip pain radiating down the leg.

    For these reasons, you should not practise yoga alone. You should also do other exercise to strengthen your muscles, such as going to the gym or doing Pilates. But if you already have these symptoms, you can come for treatment at our physical therapy clinic. Our physical therapy treatment focuses on reducing pain and relaxing the muscles with the latest modern equipment: shockwave therapy to stimulate the body's repair and reduce muscle tension, and high-power laser therapy to reduce nerve inflammation and relieve the pain radiating down the leg, together with electrical stimulation and deep heat to reduce pain. We also recommend exercises suited to each individual to strengthen specific muscles.

You can contact Rehab Care Clinic for advice on your health problems from our rehabilitation physicians and specialist physical therapists.

For more information, contact "Rehab Care Clinic"

Address: 423 Phetkasem Road, Bang Wa, Phasi Charoen, Bangkok (inside Kanari Sports Center, before Seacon Bang Khae) ? 061-801-2482 Line ID : @rehabcare