Hip & Groin Rehab
Specialist assessment and rehabilitation for hip and groin pain at Physio Tullamore — a whole systems approach, with specific protocols to guide a successful return to play.
Book a Hip & Groin Consultation in TullamoreSpecialist assessment and rehabilitation for hip and groin pain at Physio Tullamore — a whole systems approach, with specific protocols to guide a successful return to play.
Book a Hip & Groin Consultation in Tullamore
Hip and groin pain is one of the most frustrating injuries in field sport — it rarely has a single cause,
and it rarely settles with a generic programme. At Physio Tullamore we use a whole systems approach: structured
protocols, objective profiling and specific criteria to guide a successful return to play. Crucially, we treat what we
find — restoring joint mobility, rebuilding control, developing muscle strength systems and movement patterns, and
progressing the athlete through the exact demands of their sport until they are robust enough to return — better than before.
Below we outline the key things we assess and treat, starting with the three most common presentations we see in field-sport athletes.
Every athlete is assessed the same way: find the driver, treat what we find, re-test, and progress only when criteria are met. No stage is time-dependent — progression is earned through objective markers.
Osteitis pubis is a stress reaction of the pubic symphysis and surrounding bone — the classic overload
injury of sports involving repeated kicking, twisting and change of direction. To understand it, you have to understand the pubic
triangle:
the region bounded above by the rectus abdominis, below by the adductor longus (with gracilis), and
centred on the pubic symphysis. Crucially, these tendons attach in continuity through a common aponeurosis that blends
with the symphyseal fibrocartilage — so forces from the abdominal wall on one side and the thigh adductors on the other cross the pelvis
and meet at the same point.
When the load through this triangle repeatedly exceeds what the bone and tendon junction can tolerate, the adductor enthesis usually breaks down first — microtearing at its attachment. The symphysis is then left unstable, and secondary inflammation within the bone — the osteitis pubis — follows. This is why we never just treat "the sore bone": we restore hip range, rebalance the abdominal and adductor force couples, and correct the movement patterns driving the overload.
This research underpins our osteitis pubis pathway: unload and settle the irritability, restore what we find missing, then rebuild the running and cutting mechanics — rather than chasing the MRI.
Femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) is a mechanical problem of shape: the ball, the socket, and how they move relative to each other. Three anatomical factors dictate the issues an athlete experiences:
Why field sports? Football, rugby and GAA demand thousands of kicks, cuts and decelerations during exactly the years the hip is still maturing. That chronic load across the open growth plate is the key driver of cam development in adolescent athletes — and is why morphological changes are so common in elite soccer players.
You can't change the shape — but you can change what surrounds it. Our assessment identifies your version, pelvic strategy and impingement zone, then we restore what we find: capsular and muscular mobility, pelvic control, and strength systems that reduce the reliance on end-of-range bony blocks during kicking and cutting.
Groin injury is one of the biggest availability problems in professional football. The long-running UEFA Elite Club Injury Study — tracking dozens of top European clubs over 15 seasons — and whole-league studies from the Qatar Stars League give us a clear picture:
Kicking and change of direction are the dominant mechanisms — a forceful eccentric load through the adductor longus as the hip abducts,
extends and externally rotates. MRI-based classification (Serner et al.) shows recovery is grade-dependent: clinical return is often
possible in around two weeks for low-grade injuries, full team training averages about a month, and grade 3 injuries (rupture or
avulsion) can take up to three months. Structured, milestone-based rehabilitation — not rest and hope — is what protects that timeline.
Our groin strain protocol follows the evidence: early progressive loading of the adductor complex, objective strength profiling (adduction : abduction ratio, NordBord and ForceFrame), and graded re-introduction of kicking and cutting before clearance.
We treat what we find. Restriction in the hip capsule, thoracic spine or pelvis changes how load is transferred through the pubic triangle and the hip joint — so we restore it directly.
Peripheral joints (the hip itself) and global joints (pelvis, thoracic spine, ankle) affect the whole system. The clinic uses clinical
treatments including joint mobilisations to restore range of movement, ensuring the full kinetic chain
has the mobility it needs. Where spinal contributions are identified, spinal
rehabilitation
is integrated into the programme.
Every athlete is profiled — creating a rounded picture of how they express force, where their asymmetries sit, and what their movement is doing to the hip and groin under load.
Structured strength & conditioning, load monitoring, bar-speed profiling with velocity-based training, and in-depth movement coaching run throughout — developing the muscle strength systems and movement patterns that make an athlete robust, not just pain-free.
Once strength and asymmetry criteria are met, the focus switches to how the athlete actually moves — running, cutting, kicking, accelerating and decelerating. We analyse it, coach it, and re-test it.
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You leave with all of your data — every score, every comparison, every stage of the pathway — so you can
see exactly what you have restored and why you are ready to return.
Isometric strength testing of the adductors, abductors, hip flexors and extensors across multiple joint angles — objective limb symmetry data and adductor-to-abductor ratios to guide progression.
Dual force plate system for jump testing — countermovement jump, single-leg CMJ and drop jumps — measuring peak power, reactive strength index and inter-limb asymmetry.
Detailed analysis of running, cutting, kicking and change of direction — identifying the movement errors and intersegmental control deficits that drive hip and groin overload.
Bar-speed monitoring to train at the right velocity for strength and power, plus sprint and change-of-direction timing to track readiness for return to play.
Whether you are managing osteitis pubis, CAM impingement or a recurrent groin strain, our clinic in Tullamore, Co. Offaly provides structured, data-driven hip and groin rehabilitation for athletes and active individuals across Tullamore, Offaly and the Midlands.
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