By Tae Kyu Kim
Tight Hip Flexors?
Whether it’s work, school, or doomscrolling on TikTok…
All of us sit… a lot.
Overtime, these muscles (Iliopsoas, Rectus Femoris, Sartorius, and Pectineus) can shorten and become very stiff and tight. These muscles are commonly referred to as your hip flexors. Why should you stretch your hip flexors and more importantly why should you care?
With the way the muscle attaches, the hip flexors will both pull and rotate your pelvis (this is commonly referred to as anterior pelvic tilt). This can cause a string of issues like low back pain, but one of the worst ones is inactivity of one of your largest and most functional muscle groups the glutes.
Not to be WebMD here and give you more thing sot potentially worry about, but…
- This can effect your walking
- Give you poor posture and/or nerd neck
- Give you low back pain
- And render your glutes practically useless (glute amnesia)
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Above is a video of how you can visualize your hip flexors on your body (the green miniband). This is a good demonstration to show you how the hip flexors move as you “flex” your hip (bring your knee up). This is what happens when we sit.
So over time, these muscles will shorten and become very tight and cause anterior pelvic tilt. As you see the picture above, you can see why it may cause the previously discussed issues. You may be looking at this image saying, “Oh no, that might be me…”
I’m here to encourage you that it is most definitely reversible. So you are in luck!
Here is one stretch that can help combat this
The 1/2 kneeling hip flexors stretch
Step 1: go into a half kneeling position like you are Sandra Bullock in the proposal
Step 2: if you’re on your right knee, squeeze your right glute and vice versa
Step 3: Keeping an upright posture, bring your hips forward to the wall in front of you
Step 4: Hold this stretch for 15-30s on each side and repeat 3x
Now I have to say this, this stretch will only be as good as you are consistent with it. View your muscles as your pet dog Jerry. You need to take care of Jerry, if a dog owner were not to feed or walk Jerry, you would most likely say they are a bad dog owner. Take care of your body!
Here at TrainSMART Personal Fitness, we want to help you take care of yourself and be the best version of yourself that you can be! If you want to learn more or train with us, text or call now!
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