Hip Labral Tear in a Young Athlete: Why a PT Mom Drives Past a Clinic 600 Feet From Her Door
/Mary Beth has a physical therapy office 600 feet from her front door.
Some weeks, she drives her daughter up to two hours each way to come to HealthFit instead.
"To choose to come, you know, sometimes a four hour round trip other than walking out the door 600 feet, that probably speaks more than I can say."
That detail matters more once you know who Mary Beth is. She is not just a mom. She is a physical therapist herself. She knows the profession from the inside. So when she picks a clinic for her kids, she is not guessing.
This is the story of her daughter Luci, a 20-year-old taekwondo athlete with a hip labral tear, and what changed when the plan stopped being about one tool and started being about the whole athlete.
The injury that would not go away
Luci has fought taekwondo most of her life. Her brothers started first, and she followed them onto the mat. Her mom put all of her kids in for a reason she saw every day at work: too many kids and adults who could not hold a single leg balance or do a sit up.
Then Luci developed a labral tear in her left hip. It kept bothering her. The family tried conventional care. They tried holistic care. It still was not getting better.
And Luci was stuck on a question a lot of athletes know well:
"I don't know where to go or who even to trust to feel comfortable to take care of me."
Her brother had already been treated at HealthFit for a stubborn foot injury. He and Mary Beth kept pushing. Their pitch was simple: he understands our sport.
That line matters. It is hard to find a clinician who understands what a sport actually asks of a body.
"I thought you couldn't fix a labral tear"
Here is the part of this story that surprised us most. Mary Beth, a physical therapist, walked in believing a labral tear was not something you could really fix with PT.
"A labral tear probably isn't something you can fix, or what I thought you couldn't fix, until we got here."
She is not alone in that belief. But the research tells a more interesting story.
A 2018 systematic review and meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine (Heerey and colleagues) pooled imaging studies of hips. Labral tears showed up in 62% of people with hip pain. They also showed up in 54% of people with no hip pain at all.
Read that twice. More than half of people with no hip pain at all had a labral tear on imaging.
That does not mean a tear never matters. It means the tear on the scan is not the whole story. How the hip is loaded, controlled, and supported often decides whether it hurts. And that is something a good plan can change.
Finding the cause, not just the tear
Luci's physical therapist is Dr. Wayne Wu. He is the first to admit he had never done taekwondo in his life. What he does know is mechanics. So he asked her a simple question about every movement: what do you need this to do for you?
Then he looked for the cause. Here is what he found, in his words:
"Her glutes were not being able to stabilize when she has to use it as a base leg to kick with her right leg. And so she was using a lot of other muscles to compensate, so her hip flexors were tight, her IT band, TFL were really tight."
That is the difference between treating a spot and treating a system. The left hip was where the pain lived. The reason it kept getting irritated was a base leg that was not doing its job.
At HealthFit we call this Source · Cause · Stack:
Source: where the pain actually lives. For Luci, the left hip.
Cause: the upstream or downstream driver. For Luci, glutes that were not stabilizing her base leg, with other muscles picking up the slack.
Stack: the right combination of care, from Day 1. Hands + Exercise + Regen.
Dr. Wayne put it this way:
"Physical therapy along with regenerative therapy is going to be the package that's going to get her where she needs to be."
Regen was not a backup plan here. It was part of the plan from the first week, working right alongside the hands on care and the exercise.
"The machine is not the magic"
The most important thing Mary Beth said on camera was a caveat. After describing how much the regenerative therapy helped both of her kids, she stopped herself:
"I'm not sure of the effectiveness without having Dr. Wayne's knowledge of how and where to apply it, and then what to do after it. Because we never came in for just that therapy. It was always followed by some sort of manual therapy, followed by something that Luci could do at home. So I think the combination of all the treatment is what's golden."
That is exactly right, and it is the best explanation of our approach we have ever heard from a patient's family.
A shockwave machine is a tool. Dr. Wayne describes it as an extension of the clinician's hands and knowledge. If you treat a muscle on the table, you have to strengthen, stabilize, or mobilize that same area in the gym. Do only one half, and you tend to get half the result.
"There's no one tool that's going to fix everything."
The ankle sprain
Luci also came in once with a bad ankle sprain. The night it happened, her mom texted Dr. Wayne. The next day she could not walk through the front door, so he carried her in.
Luci says she walked out of that visit. She calls the regenerative therapy life changing.
We share her story because it is hers. It is not a promise. Every sprain is different, every body heals on its own timeline, and one great day in the clinic is a starting point, not a finish line. What made the difference over time was the same thing as with her hip: a plan, the hands on work, and the home program that came with it.
Luci was also honest about the sessions themselves:
"It's not the most fun experience. Even though it is painful for however long you're in the session, after, you really don't feel the side effects of it at all. Maybe just a little bit."
We appreciate that she said that. Regen sessions can be uncomfortable in the moment. Good care means telling people that up front.
The part nobody puts on a scan
Mary Beth said something else that stuck with us:
"There's so much emotional pain, emotional problems tied to pain and injury that maybe aren't addressed."
When a high level athlete gets sidelined, the injury is only part of the problem. The fear of getting hurt again is real. Dr. Wayne noticed that Luci fights aggressively, but in the clinic she moved tentatively. So part of the work was showing her, rep by rep, that those positions were safe to load again. The goal: when she steps back on the mat, the fear is not stepping on with her.
Luci describes where she is now:
"I know that Dr. Wayne always has a solution and a fix to whatever is wrong."
And Mary Beth, as a parent:
"I would move mountains for them. It was an answered prayer to find Dr. Wayne."
Homework that is actually yours
One more detail Mary Beth called out: the home program. Not a printed handout. Videos of Luci herself doing each exercise, with her own cues.
Dr. Wayne explains why:
"You can't just get better with generic stuff. You could get to a certain point, but if you wanna compete at a higher level, you need that tailored aspect."
If your athlete has a labral tear
If you or your child has been told a labral tear is just something to live with, or that surgery is the only road, it is worth getting a second look at the whole picture. Remember, more than half of people with no hip pain have a tear on imaging. The question is not only is there a tear? It is what is making this hip hurt, and what can we change?
Every athlete is different, and recovery depends on many factors. But you deserve a plan built around your body and your sport, not a template.
Ready to find out what's actually going on?
Visit www.healthfitinc.com to see how we combine physical therapy, chiropractic, strength coaching, and regenerative therapy under one roof.
Book online at healthfitinc.com/book or call 626-365-1380.
Ask about a sports injury evaluation. We start by finding the source and the cause, then build the stack from Day 1.
HealthFit Physical Therapy & Chiropractic 145 Vista Ave, Suite 103, Pasadena, CA 91107 | 626-365-1380
Source: Heerey JJ, Kemp JL, Mosler AB, et al. What is the prevalence of imaging-defined intra-articular hip pathologies in people with and without pain? A systematic review and meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2018;52(9):581-593. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29540366/
The information in this article is intended for general guidance only and should never be considered a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, medical provider, or physical therapist with any questions regarding a medical condition. Individual results vary.
