This problem is mainly directed towards Muse seeing as she probably sees this the most, but anyone with help can surely respond.

Muse, I've been a martial artist for about a decade now, but took a 5 year break during high school. Upon getting back into tae kwon do, I noticed a very strange case where side kicks and round house kicks above waist height gave me crippling pinching pain in my hips. A year of work on my own has proven ineffective and I recently got myself into an athletic PT who also was perplexed by my problem.

3 weeks of testing hasn't helped anything.

HOWEVER, last night I spent hours going through the mechanics of proper side kicks and roundhouse kicks, breaking it down to bare basics and it's connection with proper anatomical function. I won't go into too much detail, but I did have an epiphany of sorts and started realizing that the angle of a kick is not developed by the kicking leg, but the planting leg. To achieve a proper side kick and round house kick, the pelvis must rotate externally 70+ degrees.

The muscles that drive this motion are the gluteas medius and the piriformis. I know you deal with this in ballet in the first position, where the legs (femurs) are fully externally rotated increasing the angle to 160+ between both feet. I can't do this, which I now know is causing my greater trochanters to driver into my pelvic wall causing severe pain everytime I try to force a high kick.

So I'm curious to hear any help you have for me and to hear if you've dealt with this situation before. I can place my leg against a wall, and using a chair forcefully push myself into proper alignment and hold an easy and comfortable 150 degree side kick (a kick I can barely reach past 80 degrees with). How would you go about fixing this? What kind of exercises should I be looking to do to best target the muscle needed to drive this pelvic motion? Have you seen improvement in individuals who start ballet and cannot achieve first position but after time and practice can perform one comfortably?

Thanks

EDIT - I should have added, at this present moment I can achieve a 90 degree angle through max muscular exertion in first position.

Awesome, let's see if I can help you better understand. Sadly I don't own a video camera or digital camera...so my words will have to do the the best they can.

The pain is coming from the outer hip and the piriformis region. It happens on both sides equally. I had X-rays taken that showed no anatomical disorders that would hinder my ability to kick high or perform the splits, another movement that causes crippling pain.

The 150 degrees is coming from the angle made from foot to foot, planting foot to the kicking foot. This is acheived ONLY after I forcefully push with my hands on a wall my pelvis into proper alignment. A simple exercise that made me realize is a rotation test. Stand on your left leg and lift your right leg casually a couple of inches so you stand kind of like a flamingo. Now try to rotate your pelvis to the right as far as you can. Knowing you, you can probably rotate a full 90 degrees externally making your pelvis in line with your planted foot. This is something I can't do to any extent...barely 40 degrees.

All I'm saying is, I just figured out that I can perform a head level kick without pain, but to do it I need to use external force generated from my arms. A proper side kick involves rotating the planting foot so that the heel is facing the target. This is something I'm simply unable to do by my own force, causing improper alignment during kicks and drastically shortens the range of my side and round house kicks.

Which splits cause you pain? I'm guessing from your description of your problem with the kicks that it would be side splits or box splits, but I just want to be sure.

Not being able to rotate is one thing, but it should not cause you pain, especially in that area. It is probably a contributing factor to something else, alignment-related, though, and THAT is what's causing the pain. You say it happens on both sides equally. By this do you mean that, when you kick with your right leg, you feel the pain in your right and left piriformis area? Or just the right; and then on the left when you kick with the left?

My hunch is that it has to do with the tilt of your pelvis in the transverse plane while you are performing the kick, and probably in general when you are training, practicing the splits, or just going through your normal life.

A couple more questions (besides the ones I asked above) before I can deduce what's going on. Is the pain the same when you do the roundhouse as when you do the side kick? And you're alluding to the fact that the pain gets worse the higher you go. At what height does the pain start? (And at what height is it at its worst?)

Also, how is your ankle mobility?

No worries; I'm not trying to "diagnose" anything. The hip is a pretty complicated body part and isolating down specific muscles is what will help you the most here, so that's why I'm asking so many questions. Given how the hip works and when/where you're having pain, I think it's more than just increasing your outward rotation. I think there is an alignment issue that needs to be corrected as well, if I'm understanding your description of the problem.

I asked about ankle mobility because people with very mobile/flexible ankles can very often "cheat" rotation without engaging the hips properly, but this can cause problems with ROM during extensions.

As far as exercises to increase turnout, demi plie into releve in first, second, and fifth positions (be sure you are in a fully-crossed fifth). Concentrate on increasing the "diamond" shape of the legs in the plie, pulling your knees back and open with your glutes and the upper part of the hamstrings. Try to keep the degree of rotation through the extension into releve. It's easier to turn out with a bent leg, so increasing the rotation slightly and then fighting to keep it (properly, with the hips) will help develop that strength.

Fifth position will be the hardest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?sitesearch=&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideosearch%3Fq%3Ddemi+plie&v=9D6Pbh-__AA

Also, rond de jambe, both en dedans and en dehors, will help,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?sitesearch=&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideosearch%3Fq%3Ddemi+plie&v=VGhkhP3MLuY

as well as fondu and developpe font, side, and back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?sitesearch=&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideosearch%3Fq%3Ddemi+plie&v=vgjrhCQMUvk

I would encourage you to see about getting into an open division ballet class near you, as proper alignment will give you the most benefit, and that's best achieved with an expert watching you to help you engage the correct muscles.

Alternatively you can buy or rent the New York City Ballet Workout video. The floor barre sections are good for non-dancers to learn to "find" the right muscles to engage; however the cuing is pretty poor so it's a matter of trial and error as you do the exercises. In other words, they're designed to help non-dancers find those muscles, but they are not explained in a way that's helpful. The rest of the video is nice but again they don't go into much explanation of proper alignment which I think is what's causing your issue more than a lack of strength to rotate. I suspect that if you bring your pelvis into alignment you will find that you have more rotation than you think you do.

Pilates will also help a great deal with the alignment.

I hope that helps. I don't really feel like I explained it very well but you seemed very keen to get some exercises, so hopefully that's what you're looking for. If not, or if you have other questions, let me know.

No worries. I hope you're having fun in CO! Say hi to everyone for me.

If you're able to get video of you doing the kicks, and also possibly some of the exercises I suggested, I wouldn't mind taking a look at them to check your alignment (especially for the ballet stuff). You can email them to me if you don't feel comfortable posting videos of you doing ballet on the internet.

In any case I'm happy to help out where I can. Most guys have trouble with the pelvic alignment you describe, I'm not sure why. At the PKGen event in Ohio, we did some back and shoulder conditioning while seated in a pike position, and almost all the guys struggled with the posture and proper tilt of the pelvis for that one. In my time teaching ballet I've observed this too.

I hope things work out for you; it sounds like your experimentation is helping.