Concept2 Forum

Hi everyone, I've been rowing competitively with a rowing club for almost a year now (16F, 5'10", 150lb), and for the past few months (the majority of fall season) I have had pain in my hip flexors whenever I row or erg.

I've tried taping my hip flexor with kinesthesiology tape, advil, and taking a few days off, and none of it has helped. It seems to kick in once I have been rowing/erging for 20-30 minutes but even when I first start I do notice a bit of a twinge (although when I first start the pain is ignorable). The pain eventually becomes excruciating and I can't apply full pressure or use good technique because it hurts so bad.

I've tried stretching before I work out and it hasn't seemed to help. I also have tried feet out rowing some to see if perhaps that would help improve my technique and solve the issue but it hasn't seemed to work. I don't remember having this issue last spring season, at least not to this extent. I asked my coach if he saw anything wrong with my technique and all he suggested is relaxing my shoulders more and sitting up straighter (although posture is an issue I have had since the first day I sat on an erg, so I don't think posture is the issue since the pain is more recent). I've done some research and I think the issue is with my psoas in the lower area where it connects to the thigh although I could be wrong.

Any and all advice on how to help treat or solve this issue would be greatly appreciated. I'm truly stuck and very desperate as I've read every article I can find about hip flexor pain when rowing and nothing seems to help. Thanks in advance :)

Did you read in Rowing Injuries in Elite Athletes by S. Arumugam and coauthors (2020) ? There is a specific reference to hip issues.
Possibly to download here .

Or look in Rowing Injuries, by E. McNally and coauthors (2005). Download from here.

Specific on hip injuries : https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705063/

Are any of these helpful ?

I've only experienced this once in my erging life and it was extremly painful. Long story short, for me it was a need for tight footstraps and therefore a form issue. Do you rely on your footstraps?

The background for mine was a large team assualt on the 100k world record for old fat blokes. We did a continuous relay doing just 20 strokes each before handing on. In that sense it was essentially a (very long!) series of ultra-sprints. When I sprint at a high rate (I now realise) I rely on the foot straps to stop at the finish and fire back on the recovery. Pace was typically low 1:30s, occasionally faster, so rate must have been around 40. To allow the fast changes, instead of footstraps Joe had taped on a sort of rounded foam tunnel to easily slide your feet in and out. This was a completely different feel from my usual tight straps. I could tell I was consciously flexing my toes back to try to keep my feet in the stirrups but always felt on the edge of loosing my footing. After a couple of hours of this my flexors started hurting and by the end of the event (~5.5 hours) I was in serious pain which took about 3 weeks to sort out with a physio. Odd because I do most of my cool downs strapless with no issue, but clearly my form doesn't hold up at sprint speeds.

I find that stretching your hip flexor can be quite difficult to do properly. If you're on Insta, search for docjenfit and she did a great post from 25th August about stretching hips properly.

I'd also suggest doing pigeon pose stretching, as it might be more to do with your glutes. The transference of problems in your muscles is quite common, for example back pain can be due to tight hamstrings

MPx wrote: ↑

November 29th, 2022, 3:58 pm

I've only experienced this once in my erging life and it was extremly painful. Long story short, for me it was a need for tight footstraps and therefore a form issue. Do you rely on your footstraps?

The background for mine was a large team assualt on the 100k world record for old fat blokes. We did a continuous relay doing just 20 strokes each before handing on. In that sense it was essentially a (very long!) series of ultra-sprints. When I sprint at a high rate (I now realise) I rely on the foot straps to stop at the finish and fire back on the recovery. Pace was typically low 1:30s, occasionally faster, so rate must have been around 40. To allow the fast changes, instead of footstraps Joe had taped on a sort of rounded foam tunnel to easily slide your feet in and out. This was a completely different feel from my usual tight straps. I could tell I was consciously flexing my toes back to try to keep my feet in the stirrups but always felt on the edge of loosing my footing. After a couple of hours of this my flexors started hurting and by the end of the event (~5.5 hours) I was in serious pain which took about 3 weeks to sort out with a physio. Odd because I do most of my cool downs strapless with no issue, but clearly my form doesn't hold up at sprint speeds.

I've noticed that lately, I've been lifting my toes up more than usual when I row and relying more on the straps to keep my feet in. I've tried doing some short rows at lower rates with feet out and it could be better. I've added some core workouts into my workout plan, but am having trouble as many of the core workouts I have done seem to also utilize my hip flexors and flare them up. I'm hoping that doing more exercises for my lower back and core will help.