Quote Originally Posted by indysteel View Post
Just an FYI that hip pain is sometimes a symptom of other issues. I experienced horrible hip pain two years ago that landed me in PT. It was largely caused by weak glutes. I would have never figured that out without the help of a sports medicine doctor. While I'm all for stretching, the word "pain" suggests to me that something more serious is going on than mere stiffness. Especially if it's been sore for a while, consider seeing a doctor. I put off seeing one myself for far too long and regretted that I'd hadn't been more aggressive. Even if it's nothing overly serious, it couldn't hurt to get a professional opinion as to what will best remedy your discomfort.
What she said.

I've had hip pain on and off, and now very bad hip pain consistently for 6 months. I would have thought stretching would help, but I finally gave in and went to my orthopedic doc. It actually turns out that given what my condition is at this hip, stretching in the way I would typically want to would be damaging to the condition I have going on. (A cyst in the bone caused by impingement of the pelvic bone on the head of the femur - certain movements cause grinding of bone on bone and are wearing down the cartilage and bone. Wouldn't have diagnosed that without an X ray (which said yikes you have a tumor in your hip bone!) and a MRI (which said ok, not a "bad" tumor but we gotta do something here to avoid having to have surgery and anything resembling stretching/range of motion exercises for this hip is off limits).

So +1 for getting it checked out to be safe.