How to reduce the chances of hip pain coming back
Nicola Tik
If your hip has been painful recently, it is natural to want to understand what might have contributed and what you can do to make a recurrence less likely. Hip pain does not always have a single cause, but movement habits and how much you ask of the hip across a typical day play a bigger role than many people realise. The most consistent thing the evidence points to is straightforward: moving more and sitting less makes a meaningful difference to hip health over time.
This is one of the reasons hip pain can seem to appear without an obvious cause. It is often not a single event but the accumulation of prolonged sitting, reduced movement, and then a relatively normal activity that tips a sensitised area into pain.
Breaking up sitting time is one of the simplest and most effective habits you can build. Aiming to get up and move for a few minutes every 30 to 45 minutes across the day, rather than waiting for discomfort to prompt you, keeps the hip cycling through its range regularly and reduces the stiffening effect of sustained sitting.
The hip is designed for load and movement. Regular activity that takes the hip through a reasonable range, such as walking, gentle cycling, swimming, or a gradual return to whatever activities you enjoy, helps build the strength and tolerance of the muscles and structures around the joint over time.
Walking is particularly useful because it is low impact, accessible, and easy to build gradually. If you are currently doing very little walking, starting with 10 to 15 minutes at a comfortable pace once a day and building by a few minutes each week gives the hip time to adapt without overloading it.
Gentle strengthening of the muscles around the hip, particularly the glutes and the muscles on the outer hip, helps the joint manage load more efficiently. A simple option is a standing exercise: holding onto a surface for support, slowly lift one leg out to the side to a comfortable height, hold for two to three seconds, then lower. Repeat eight to ten times on each side, once a day. This is something you can build into a daily routine without equipment.
If you would like a guided routine to support hip strength and mobility, VIDA has a short video you can follow at your own pace.
Beyond structured exercise, it is worth looking at the everyday habits that shape how much load the hip is managing. A few worth considering:
How much of your day is spent sitting, and whether there are natural points where you could stand or move instead. Standing during phone calls, walking to a colleague rather than sending a message, or doing a short walk at lunchtime are all small shifts that add up.
How you carry load, such as always carrying a bag on the same shoulder or always leading with the same leg on stairs, creates asymmetry over time that can contribute to one hip being loaded more than the other.
Footwear also plays a role. Shoes with reasonable cushioning and support reduce the impact load travelling through the hip with every step, which matters more over long distances or hard surfaces.
Gradually rebuilding activity after a period of hip pain tends to work better than waiting until the hip feels completely better before doing anything, or jumping back into full activity too quickly. A useful approach is to return to activities at a reduced level first, perhaps shorter duration or lower intensity, and build from there over a few weeks as the hip responds.
Your VIDA pain check-in is a good way to keep track of how things are shifting as you build activity back up.