If you work out regularly, there’s a high chance you’ll get injured during your fitness journey, and one of the most common injuries that plague fitness junkies is hip pain.
It’s annoying, painful, and it ruins your day-to-day life.
It also makes reaching your fitness goals much harder, whether it’s losing weight, building muscle, or a bit of both.
So how do you avoid and cure hip pain and a laundry list of other potential injuries? Compression shorts! They help speed up recovery, reduce inflammation, and are super comfortable to wear.
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What Benefits Does Compression Shorts Offer?
Compression shorts are a useful piece of clothing that everyone who hits the gym can benefit from. If you’re struggling with hip bursitis or hip pain in general, then wearing compression shorts can make your life a lot easier.
Compression Shorts Helps Treat Hip Bursitis
Most medical professionals suggest using the RICE method when you’re injured. RICE stands for rest, ice, compress, elevate and compression is an important part of that formula since it reduces swelling.
Trochanteric bursitis or more commonly known as hip bursitis is a condition where the fluid-filled sacs in your hip joints become inflamed. This affects your hip’s outer area and the upper part of your leg.
Hip bursitis could be caused by lifting too much too quickly or doing an exercise incorrectly.
Luckily, by wearing compression shorts, you add extra pressure to your lower body which is found to reduce inflammation and increase blood flow. This makes it easier to recover from workouts and injuries.
This makes compression shorts an effective way of not only healing hip bursitis but preventing it.
Compression Shorts Help Speed Up Recovery
Anyone who hits the gym regularly knows that recovery is an essential part of building muscle and losing weight. Sometimes you try to up the volume of work but your body doesn’t cooperate.
This is where compression shorts and compression gear in general is super helpful.
Research has found that wearing compression gear during a workout can reduce or even eliminate muscle fatigue and soreness. This doesn’t only happen during your workout, but while you’re recovering outside the gym.
Compression Shorts Reduce Inflammation
This is the biggest reason why wearing compression shorts help with hip pain. Inflammation is your body’s natural response to a threat. It’s normal, but you don’t want it happening all the time.
When you’re constantly inflamed, we call it chronic inflammation and it’s one of the biggest causes of hip, back, and joint pain.
The reason why wearing compression shorts reduces inflammation is because it increases blood flow in your muscles which improves injury recovery.
What Risks Are Involved With Wearing Compression Shorts?
There are some precautions to take before buying a pair of compression shorts. First, if you have a skin condition, heart problem, or a circulatory condition, then consult with a professional before wearing compression shorts.
If you don’t suffer from any of these conditions or you’ve been cleared by a medical professional, then there won’t be much risk when wearing compression shorts.
Most problems that occur when wearing compression shorts are caused by shorts that are too tight. This can lead to problems like blood restriction, limited mobility, and worsened skin and circulatory problems.
Reduced Blood Flow
Although compression shorts can increase blood flow in your muscles, if you wear shorts that are too tight, it can restrict blood flow.
This makes it feel like an exercise is harder than it really is. For example, if you’re used to doing 10 pistol squats per set, you might only be able to grind out 8.
Reduced blood flow can also compromise your recovery between sets which affects your performance.
Luckily the solution is simple, opt for a slightly bigger pair of compression pants and you’ll flip these drawbacks of their heads.
Limited Mobility
If your compression shorts are too small, then you’ll feel some discomfort during your exercises. For example, if you’re doing squats, you’ll feel extra resistance at the bottom of the movement. This is caused by your compression shorts being too tight.
This can impact your performance because it forces you to do a partial rep.
To overcome this problem, opt for bigger compression shorts and you’ll be able to perform your lifts with a full range of motion.
Worsened Skin And Circulatory Problems
Not every problem can be solved by wearing a larger size. If you have skin problems or you suffer from circulatory problems like heart disease, high blood pressure, or breathing problems, then even if you wear the correct sized compression gear, it can still affect you negatively.
If you’ve been cleared by a medical professional, you still need to find out what works for you. Let’s start wearing compression gear and your skin problems get worse or you find it difficult to breathe, then remove it and workout in regular gym clothes.
How To Choose The Proper Compression Shorts To Help Hip Pain
If you’re suffering from hip pain, there are a few factors to consider when looking for compression shorts to help. Some include;
- Comfort
- Stretch
- Moisture-wicking materials.
Comfort
Comfort is the most important factor to consider when looking for compression shorts since uncomfortable shorts can restrict blood flow and compromise recovery.
If your compression shorts feel too tight and restrictive, opt for a bigger one but not one that’s too big or you’ll just be flushing your money down the toilet.
Compression shorts that are too loose won’t give you those anti-inflammatory benefits for your hip pain since there isn’t any compression happening.
A rule of thumb I like to follow is that if you can feel it, it’s either too tight or too loose. When you put on a pair of compression shorts, you shouldn’t feel it. It should feel like nothing. That’s how you know you’ve got a perfect size.
Stretch
Choose a pair of compression shorts that’ll stretch with your body as you’re performing an exercise. This improves your performance inside the gym since you’re able to use a full range of motion instead of doing partial reps.
This can also help with hip pain. If you’re doing stretches like the butterfly stretch or lying hip rotations which are great ways to manage hip pain, then you’ll have greater freedom of motion.
Tightness
Although you don’t want your compression shorts to be too tight, you also shouldn’t buy loose compression shorts.
Most people who wear compression shorts to the gym wear them wrong. They’ll buy a size that’s way too loose and it hangs like normal shorts. When you wear compression shorts like this, your muscles and joints aren’t getting the extra support and anti-inflammatory benefits that help treat hip pain.
Compression shorts should hug your glutes, hamstrings, and quads. This helps reduce inflammation and increase blood flow which treats hip pain and hip bursitis. It also increases the nutrients that go to your muscles allowing you to recover faster.
What Are Some Alternatives To Compression Shorts?
Compression pants cover your entire leg instead of just your upper leg. Both are great options for people struggling with hip pain but there isn’t one that’s better than the other. It comes down to personal preference.
Both compression shorts and pants reduce inflammation in your hips which allows you to recover faster and experience less hip pain.
Conclusion
Hip pain is something that troubles most people who’re into fitness. If you’ve never experienced hip pain while working out, you may in the future. One of the best ways of eliminating hip pain is to wear compression shorts since it reduces inflammation in your hips and speeds up recovery.
FAQ
Does Compression Shorts Help With Tight Hamstrings?
Compression shorts can help with tight hamstrings since it increases blood flow and nutrients in your hamstrings while reducing inflammation. This makes it easier to stretch your hamstring muscle but you must still put in the work.
Putting on compression shorts by itself won’t do much, but combine that with stretching your hamstrings regularly, and you’ll become more flexible.
Is It Bad To Wear Compression Shorts All The Time?
Compression gear is safe to wear all day, but it can get uncomfortable. It differs from person to person since some people might love wearing compression pants all day while others hate them.
If you have skin issues or circulatory problems, you’d want to stay away from wearing compression pants all day since it can aggravate your health problems.
