Hip Impingement Symptoms: How to Recognize FAI Early
Hip impingement, or femoroacetabular impingement (FAI), is the deep pinch in the front of the groin you notice on a long drive, in a below-parallel squat, or when you pull your knee toward your chest. It is not the same ache as gluteal tendinopathy or a strained hip flexor, though people mistake it for both all the time. In FAI, the ball of the hip and the rim of the socket meet earlier than they should, and the tissue squeezed in between is usually the labrum.Roughly 1 in 4 adults with no hip pain at all shows cam-type bone shape on imaging, so the finding by itself proves very little. The 2016 Warwick Agreement consensus, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, settled on a three-part definition: matching symptoms, clinical signs, and imaging. Here is what that combination looks like in real life, why it so often gets read as a muscle problem, and what conservative care can honestly deliver.