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Form Osteopathy Osteopathy, dry needling and exercise rehabilitation for spinal pain, headaches and sporting injury.

20/10/2026

Dr Tim Morris | Osteopath actually has FAIS himself and as a result, early-onset hip osteoarthritis at age 37.

Like many people with FAIS, his symptoms built slowly: hips aching after basketball as an adolesecent, a shallower squat and progressively less comfort crouching or sitting cross-legged, which he was so used to he thought it was normal.

Learn about how Dr Tim Morris | Osteopath condition progressed and what’s he’s doing to manage the symptoms 👆

Can FAIS lead to hip osteoarthritis? Continued…The link between FAIS and hip osteoarthritis comes down to mechanics. Eve...
15/10/2026

Can FAIS lead to hip osteoarthritis? Continued…

The link between FAIS and hip osteoarthritis comes down to mechanics.

Every repeated instance of impingement - the compression between the femur and the socket - places extra stress on the same cartilage and labral tissue that hip osteoarthritis eventually erodes.

Over years, particularly in a joint that's being loaded repeatedly through the exact ranges where impingement occurs, this repetitive stress is understood to accelerate the kind of cartilage wear that defines osteoarthritis.

Can FAIS lead to hip osteoarthritis?The short answer is yes. The long answer is:Before connecting the dots between FAIS ...
13/10/2026

Can FAIS lead to hip osteoarthritis?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is:

Before connecting the dots between FAIS and osteoarthritis, it helps to be clear on what hip osteoarthritis actually is.

Osteoarthritis is a progressive joint condition involving the gradual breakdown of the cartilage that normally lets the hip move smoothly and absorb load.

As that cartilage wears down, the joint loses its cushioning, movement becomes stiffer and more restricted, and pain tends to increase over time.

If left unaddressed, these symptoms generally continue rather than resolve on their own.

08/10/2026

⚡️ Adaptations when dealing with FAIS ⚡️

A bony change at the hip can’t be reversed, except with surgery - and that can feel like a dead end. But there are things we can do in the clinic to work around this issue.

The hip moves in three planes: forward and back, side to side and rotation. If rotation is restricted, there may still be room to improve movement in the other two, which can give the joint a little more space to work with.

We can also look beyond the hip. The spine, the foot, the ankle and the calf all share the load of everyday movement. Helping them do their part can take some of the demand off the hip.

It’s less about forcing one joint to change and more about finding where else the body can contribute to ease the load.

If you’ve been told you have a structural change at the hip and aren’t sure what that means for how you move, we’d love to talk it through with you.



(Planes of motion images by Brittany England for Healthline).

06/10/2026

🔎 Pain isn’t always the first clue 🔎

Changes in the hip’s structure and mechanics don’t always announce themselves as pain straight away.

Reduced hip range of motion can occur before someone ever reports discomfort, which is why paying attention to early signs matters, particularly in young athletes still going through this developmental window.

Signs and symptoms worth watching for include:

🔹Groin pain that comes on during activity
🔹Noticeably reduced hip mobility
🔹Pain or stiffness after prolonged sitting
🔹Clicking, catching or locking sensations in the hip

Picking up on these signs early opens the door to earlier guidance around load management and monitoring, rather than waiting until symptoms are already established.

Why do these different hip shapes develop?Cam morphology isn't something people are born with. It develops during childh...
01/10/2026

Why do these different hip shapes develop?

Cam morphology isn't something people are born with. It develops during childhood and adolescence.

The extra bone at the head-neck junction typically first becomes visible on X-ray from around age 13, then continues to build until the growth plate at the top of the femur closes.

Once that growth plate fuses, the shape is set. No further change tends to occur into adulthood.

The leading explanation is that this bony growth happens as an extension of the open growth plate (femoral epiphysis) itself, occurring during a period when the bone is still actively growing and is more responsive to the loads placed on it.

This is why the theory points so strongly toward sport: young athletes going through periods of rapid growth, particularly in high-impact and change-of-direction sports, appear to develop cam morphology at meaningfully higher rates than their non-athletic peers.

In practical terms, this means cam morphology is largely a story of adolescence: a bony adaptation that forms in response to load during a specific developmental window, then stays essentially fixed for the rest of a person's life.

29/09/2026

Bone shape isn’t the enemy – compression is ⚡️

Having a cam, pincer or mixed hip shape doesn’t hurt in itself. What actually produces pain and joint damage is when repeated compression between the femur and the socket occurs.

Repeated over months and years, particularly in someone whose sport or activity regularly pushes their hip into these end-range positions, this compression takes a toll.

Research suggests that it’s the repetitive mechanical loading, not the bone shape on its own, doing the damage.

Managing FAIS isn’t necessarily about fixing a bone shape but about identifying and modifying the movements and loads that are driving compression in that joint.

24/09/2026

How do you pronounce Femoroacetabular Impingement Syndrome? 🤣

Who gets FAIS and when? FAIS symptoms often first appear in early adolescence, but they tend to become most pronounced i...
22/09/2026

Who gets FAIS and when?

FAIS symptoms often first appear in early adolescence, but they tend to become most pronounced in the late teens and early twenties, with peak incidence generally falling somewhere between 20 and 40 years of age.

Activities that demand an extreme range of hip motion, such as ballet, gymnastics or martial arts can bring symptoms on earlier or make them more noticeable, simply because these movements push the joint toward the end ranges where impingement is most likely to occur.

Symptoms are also more common in the athletic population generally, particularly in sports that involve rapid changes of direction, such as basketball, AFL and soccer.
Movements in these sports typically repeatedly load the hip through rotation and deep flexion.

From a clinical perspective, the timing for diagnosing FAIS matters.

Because FAIS tends to take hold during the very years someone is most active in sport, and because it can persist and contribute to hip osteoarthritis later in life, recognising the early signs in adolescence and early adulthood is where the real opportunity for management lies.

🔷 Meet the 3 hip shapes 🔷When considering FAIS, we need to understand the different hip shapes and how some of these hip...
17/09/2026

🔷 Meet the 3 hip shapes 🔷

When considering FAIS, we need to understand the different hip shapes and how some of these hip morphologies can lead to the development of FAIS.

No two hips are built exactly the same, and the femur and acetabulum come in a handful of recognised variations.

Understanding these variations is central to understanding FAIS because it's the shape of the joint itself that determines whether impingement becomes a risk.

The 3 hip shapes:

🔹Normal hip morphology: there's a slight concave curve where the neck of the femur meets the head, and the socket sits angled slightly forward - a feature known as anteversion.
🔹Cam morphology: extra bone forms at the front and top of the femoral head-neck junction and the femoral head loses some of its natural roundness.
🔹Pincer morphology: It describes overcoverage of the socket over the femoral head, either in one area (focal) or around the whole rim (global) and is typically associated with either a retroverted or unusually deep acetabulum.
🔹Mixed morphology: describes cam and pincer features occurring together, sometimes referred to as combined ‘impingement morphologies’.

These variations in the hip joint are referred to as morphologies and not deformities due to the regular occurrence of these bony variations and the absence of definitive symptoms associated with them.

These shapes turn up so frequently in people without any pain, and because their presence doesn't reliably predict who will go on to develop symptoms, ‘morphology’ has become the preferred term.

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Bundall, QLD
4217

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