I don't get anything I call pain in the hips, but I suffer from weakness and frequent muscle soreness in the hip region. Its the way I'm built and what I do. I've always been a skinny weakling and my hobbies of surfing and skateboarding work my flexors hard. I use a lot of leg kick to catch waves because my stringy arms aren't as effective as most peoples, plus I've always had a good swimming flutter kick - I discovered this when I did some swim training - just about everybody (including the women) could beat me in a lap of the pool using the front crawl, but I outdid everybody in a kickboard race. I'm also trying to ollie my skateboard, I can sort of ollie really badly - it works my flexors hard anyway.
I've discovered from trial and error that 2 days in a row of doing multiple sessions of surfing and/or skateboarding in a row is the maximum I can go before I need a rest day, otherwise I risk getting soreness so bad that it takes more than one rest day to recover or even a muscle pull. If I'm not careful to pace or condition myself I even get acute soreness - that is soreness that comes on the same day, I suppose if I recover within two days its not really a injury, but needing more than 1 rest day is counter productive to maximising fun.
My flexors are therefore prone to getting tight, something I have solved by all sorts of flexor stretches which I do regularly, but something more mysterious is (or I should say was) is my rear outer upper hip tendon attachment point. Completely symptom/soreness free, but whenever I get a massage (every 3 weeks) or if I'm on holiday in Thailand massage pressure in that area makes me wince with the tenderness. I asked the Australian massage therapist what that tendon attachment point is and he told me its for the gluteus minimus. Knowing that means I now know how to stretch it - lie on back if doing the right GM pull knee with hand to the left - and this is the important bit, pull the knee in the direction of the shoulder - I discovered this after the massage left me tender in this area and I really felt the stretch when pulling the knee upwards, not just across the body.
So you might think what's the problem if my gluteus minimus is symptom free when walking, but tender under massage pressure. Well I just don't believe that having somemuscle or tendon really tight is good for longevity. There is this idea that muscles sometimes get tight because they are weak, not just because repetetive motion is shortening them.
So what I am doing is rubber band exercises. I know this all sounds a bit pissweak compared to the barbell, but I'm able to exercise my hips from all angles and by going light with the bands on my rest days I can keep it up without interfering with my hobbies - very light with the easy yellow band. I don't really know how much this active recovery benefits me though, its just what I do.
Von Meister's philosophy of going hard with the training in the off season is great. The problem is a lot of don't have an off season, we a surfing non stop year round. However, for a combination of reasons about a month and a bit ago I spent a week+ off my surfboard/skateboard and was doing the bands almost every day, more vigorously than what I do now, 2 or 3 times a day and it really seemed to strengthen my flexors. A couple of the band exercises do the gluteus minimus too.