How to Strategically Strengthen, Open, and Stretch your Hip Flexors
Ever feel discomfort or pain in your hips after long periods of sitting or lying down? Upper leg cramping got you stalled in your pre-race stretch? Or do you feel pain when you stride forward as you pull your knee to your chest?
All and any of this could be related to tight hip flexors. For many runners and athletes, tight hip flexor muscles are caused by a muscle imbalance and off mechanics.
How do you know if you have poor hip flexion?
There’s a few ways you can tell if your hip flexors are tight.
Dr. Kristie Ennis, DPT, CSCS, founder and owner shares a no equipment, easy-to-do test on Youtube. You start by lying on your back, and pull one knee into the chest. The focus is on the leg that is on your mat, or off the bed. Is that leg bending up, or activating to compensate for the discomfort? This is evidential of tight hip flexors.
John Gibbons is a registered Osteopath, International Lecturer and Multi-published Author. Like Dr. Ellis, he demonstrates how to use the modified thomas test to assess for the length of the hip flexors. You will see you can also use this test to check if you tight or strained Psoas, Rectus femoris, or assess the adductor muscles and TFL with the IT Band.
How does a muscle imbalance occur and affect your hip flexors?
The motion of running relies on strong, mobile hip flexor muscles to pull the knees toward the chest with every stride. The repetition of the motion is generally where the root of the problem begins, leading to potential injury or over compensating with other muscle groups.
End result: an imbalance occurs and your performance suffers.
It’s important to recognize how life style interferes with our hip flexors, too. Aside from causing sleepy glute syndrome, sitting all day also shortens our muscles and tendons. Your body sitting idle can really bother your hip flexor muscles leading to muscle imbalance, especially if you’re performing high-strain workouts long before or after you sit for an extended period of time. For runners, it can lead to inefficient mechanics — natural running form and function weakened from inactive muscles or improper firing of muscle groups.
To do what you love longer, you should give some TLC to your hip flexors.
Hips need mobility, strengthening, and stretching. Treat your hip flexor muscles well, and they will reward you with comfortable strides and greater efficiency while exercising.
Yoga is an excellent way to spend time taking care of your body — and your hip flexors!
Runner’s World has been cheering on runners for years and publishes leading articles from the latest research in science, physical therapy, and you guess it — yoga to help improve your running performance and understand the keys to running more efficiently so you can stride for longer into your life.
Amanda Nurse, an elite marathon runner, running coach and yoga instructor shares that nursing your hip flexors requires a holistic approach. Goop hip flexion requires full-body engagement, including stretching and strengthening both the front and the back of the hip flexors, which are the glute muscles.
Here are a few poses you can do altogether as a warm-up or active recovery to engage your hip flexors in a healthy way, making sure you are doing all the things necessary to negate any muscle imbalances caused by poor hip flexion:
Standing Split Pose
Setup: Start standing at the front of your mat. Sweep your right leg bag with your hands at your hips. Drop your hands to frame your front foot. Using your exhales, hinge from your hips to fold deeper, bringing your head towards your shin. Repeat on the other side.
Modifications: Add crunches to engage your glute! Send your floating leg to the outside of your shin as you bend into a squat.
Benefits: balance challenger, glute engager, hip flexor stretcher.
Low lunge variation
Setup: Start standing at the front of your mat. Step your right foot all the way to the back of your mat. Your front foot is bent at 90 degrees, knee tracking over ankle. Drop your back left knee and lift your arms over head. Repeat on other side.
Modifications: Get at your sciatica activated and stretched by grabbing your opposite wrist of the front foot and then leaning to the opposite side (the same side as your front leg!).
Benefits: sciatica engager, hip flexor stretcher/opener, chest opener, quad strengthener.
One legged mountain pose
Setup: Start standing at the front of your mat. Balancing on your left left, slowly pull your right leg in towards your chest. Stop at hip height, keep the foot flexed and knee bent at 90 degrees. Practice keeping hips “square,” or dropping lifted leg hip so that it is level with the hip on the standing leg. This will engage and strengthen your hip flexor. Switch sides.
Modifications: Add in a pulse! Practice bending and extending the lifted leg out in front of you (no more than hip height). You can also try sending it back for airplane pose for an additive balance challenge.
Benefits: glute strengthener, balance challenger, hamstring engager, hip flexor strengthener.
Pigeon Pose
Setup: From down dog, lift your right left high to the sky and pull it to your right elbow between your arms. Lay and parallel your shin with your mat. Allow your back left knee to drop. Slowly with every exhale, lower your torso down onto the mat and send your arms out in front of you. Stay for 2–3 minutes. Repeat on other side.
Modifications: Place a pillow or soft prop underneath the hip you are stretching. Stay up right from your hips to the crown of your head if the pain or sensation in your lower body is strong.
Benefits: hip opener, glute release, hamstring stretch, hip flexor opener/release. Improves posture and calming effect on the central nervous system.
Crescent Lunge
Setup: From Low Lunge (see above to get setup), lift your back knee. Squeeze your thights together to stand up right and sweep your arms up to frame your ears. Repeat on other side.
Modifications: Practice balance and add a hip flexor strengthener with leg pulls! Bring the leg that is at the back of your mat forward in towards your chest and stop at hip height. On the inhale, send to the top of the lifted thigh simultaneously and push lightly down on the thigh to further strengthen the hip flexor. Step it back to crescent lunge position on your exhale. Repeat three to four times!
Benefits: hip opener, glute release, hamstring stretch, hip flexor opener/release.
