One tendon. Two jobs. Most products do one.
What the research says about lateral hip pain, and how we built a program around the half that has trial evidence behind it.
It is a tendon, not your age.
Pain on the outside of the hip, worse lying on that side, worse on stairs. Usually one cause: the gluteal tendons where they attach to the bony point of the hip.
Scans of the joint come back clean, because the joint is fine. The tendon sits outside it.
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Three parts. Each doing a different job.
Tap a plus to see what each one is for.
The light wrap
Red and near-infrared LEDs in a cordless band that sits over the outer hip. It warms and settles the area so the loading that follows is comfortable to do. Worn for the whole session.
Tap to expand
Graded bands
Progressive resistance is how a tendon gains capacity. The program moves through tensions as you get stronger, which is the mechanism the trial evidence supports.
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The guided app
It doses every session, shows each movement, and tells you when to stop. In the trial, confidence in what to do explained more of the benefit than strength gains did.4
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Exercise beat the injection. Then kept beating it.
The BMJ published a trial of 204 people with this exact condition, randomly assigned to guided exercise, a cortisone injection, or wait and see.3
At one year, the injection group had fallen back to roughly where wait-and-see landed. The exercise group had not.
That trial tested a physiotherapy program, not our device. We built our program on the principle it validated.
Rated much or moderately better at 52 weeks. Mellor et al., BMJ 2018.
Half the hip exercises online make this worse.
The band running over these tendons presses them into the bone whenever the hip crosses toward the midline.1 Compression plus stretch is what tendons tolerate least. None of these appear in our program.
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What the light is for, and what it isn't.
Reviews of red and near-infrared light across tendon problems find a real short-term effect on pain, at the right dose.6 That is what our wrap is for.
What no one has tested, us included, is light as a way to rebuild this particular tendon. So we don't sell it that way. The rebuilding comes from the loading.
Twelve weeks, honestly mapped.
Tendons rebuild slowly enough that you can't feel it day to day. Knowing the shape stops people quitting in week three.
Calm and activate. Low load, and learning what to stop doing. Pain often changes little. That is expected.
Real loading begins. Where the trial groups separated, and where stairs usually start to feel different.
Heavier, slower, single leg. Building capacity that holds up to ordinary life.
Clinical sources place meaningful recovery at three to six months. Twelve weeks is a serious start.
- Grimaldi A, Fearon A. Gluteal tendinopathy: integrating pathomechanics and clinical features in its management. JOSPT. 2015;45(11):910–922.
- Segal NA, Felson DT, Torner JC, et al. Greater trochanteric pain syndrome: epidemiology and associated factors. Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2007;88(8):988–992.
- Mellor R, Bennell K, Grimaldi A, et al. Education plus exercise versus corticosteroid injection use versus a wait and see approach on global outcome and pain from gluteal tendinopathy. BMJ. 2018;361:k1662.
- Mellor R, Kasza J, Grimaldi A, et al. Mediators and moderators of education plus exercise on perceived improvement in individuals with gluteal tendinopathy. JOSPT. 2022;52(12):826–836.
- Kongsgaard M, Kovanen V, Aagaard P, et al. Corticosteroid injections, eccentric decline squat training and heavy slow resistance training in patellar tendinopathy. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2009;19(6):790–802.
- Tripodi N, Feehan J, Husaric M, et al. The effect of low-level red and near-infrared photobiomodulation on pain and function in tendinopathy: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Sports Sci Med Rehabil. 2021;13:91.
- Silbernagel KG, Thomeé R, Eriksson BI, Karlsson J. Continued sports activity, using a pain-monitoring model, during rehabilitation in patients with Achilles tendinopathy. Am J Sports Med. 2007;35(6):897–906.
The Aress program and the content on this page were reviewed by a licensed physiotherapist before publication. This page is educational and is not a substitute for individual clinical assessment.
Both halves, in twenty minutes a day.
Wrap, bands, and a guided app that doses every session. Ninety days to decide.
Aress Wellness guides general conditioning for hip comfort and mobility. It does not diagnose or treat any condition and is not a substitute for advice from a qualified clinician. If you have pain radiating below the knee, numbness or pins and needles, pain that began after a fall, night pain that repeatedly wakes you, or hip surgery in the last six months, speak to a clinician before starting any loading program.