Quote Originally Posted by maillotpois View Post
I'd second the suggestion of going to a sports med doctor - and I would suggest doing that before jumping into PT. I had very similar presentation (pain on the upstroke of the pedal when the hip is bent 90 degrees or more as you describe) - I had low level on and off pain for 10+ years, increasing in frequency and intensity over the last year to where I really couldn't cycle anymore. Turned out to be femoral acetabular impingement (basically a big bone spur leading to a large hole in the femur and a torn labrum) and I had surgery in July. I'm on the road to recovery and the hip honestly felt better the day after surgery than the day before.

So, anyway, I hope yours is simply a muscle imbalance, but it wouldn't hurt to get get really checked and get an x-ray because if I had tried to heal my issue with PT alone, I would have done a lot more damage to the hip joint and the femur.
Going to a Sports Med Doc is never a bad choice. Having said that, in general unless the issue is severe with significant bone defects (as was the case with maillotpois) you will usually be sent for conservative PT treatment first. Unless you get a really sh!tty PT, they shouldn't make it worse. If the PT doesn't work, then it's back to the doc to discuss other options.

I've seen a lot of people with this type of injury, I'd say that more than half of them manage really well without surgery. Of the surgery clients I've seen, about half of those do extremely well. Of the ones that are left you'll occasionally see one that is actually worse after the surgery than they were before and usually that's because they ignored some serious precautions after the surgery because they wanted to get back to cycling too early.

So yes, you want to explore the treatment for all your muscle imbalances, weaknesses etc before jumping in to surgery but sometimes it's inevitable and when it is, surgery is often a glorious relief.