The Hip Flexors
Hip flexor tightness is a topic that’s been on my mind a lot lately. The more and more hip flexor “tightness” I encounter, the more and more I see the hip flexor is (or perhaps more accurately, FEELS) tight because it’s over-worked or can’t relax vs the muscle being “short” or “scarred down” or “stuck”.
Everyone muscle in your body holds some sort of tone, or level of contraction. Think of it like a volume nob on a stereo. When the volume gets turned up, the muscle contracts harder. Turn the volume down and the muscle can relax. A ton of “tight hip flexors” are because the volume is turned up too high and you don’t know how to turn it down.
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Why Would the Volume Be Up So High?
One of the missions of your brain is to make sure you can move around and don’t collapse to the floor. To do that, you have to have some muscular activity to hold you up. If you are controlling your spine and pelvis using the hip flexor muscles too much instead of some other muscles that attach to your pelvis (abdominals in this case), the volume will be chronically too high in your hip flexors..and guess what that feels like in people?
You guessed it, tightness! See why stretching hasn’t been helping you? Because it isn’t a stretching deficiency. You have to teach your brain how to turn the volume down.
Movement Evidence
I want to introduce you to a term I call “Movement Evidence”. I hate guessing when I do things. I like to have evidence supporting why I’m doing what I’m doing. Using some sort of functional test can give me movement evidence on whether or not a particular drill will be helpful for someone.
For this hip flexor deal we are talking about, take a band and attach it to a pull up rack near you. Put tension on the band and place it under your low back (just below your rib cage). Take both arms and legs up toward the ceiling. Slowly lower one straight leg toward the ground at a time trying to keep the band pinned to the floor. [note: check the video for details on this]
If the band slips out from your back, it shows us that your anterior chain muscles (like your abs) can’t control your spine as well as it could. Because the spine isn’t controlled well by those other muscles, you will have a tough time turning the hip flexor volume down. Anterior chain strengthening is a new important thing for you. Your hip flexors don’t know how to lengthen while the spine is being kept still.
Will This Help Me if I don’t Have Tightness?
Yes. If you think about jerking a barbell overhead, you need to have a good ability of your hip flexors to lengthen for the back leg. If you work on the drill in the video, it will help your jerk undoubtedly.
Free 7-day email course
Hips & Low Back Basics
One short email a day for 7 days: hip mobility drills, stretching routines, and how to take stress off your back.
Thank you for the video Ryan! I would like to get your opinion on my take of this video. I think your test is a great tool but I wonder if re-doing the test is the best way to train to allow the hip flexors to relax… Perhaps training the movement without the band under the low back and getting in to more of a neutral spine and incorporating breathing into the movement would be more effective? I would think you would run into the problem of training core strength without as much of an emphasis on actual core stability as you would train rectus abdominus dominance with lumbar flexion rather than the core as a whole in neutral spine. Holding your breath as you descend would seem to train more of an “all or none” bracing strategy as you do all that you can to hold onto your lumbar flexion as you drop the legs rather than just enough tension for the task at hand. Just my 2 cents.
Hey Andrew,
You make great points and there are likely many ways to skin the cat. A low threshold strategy could be used to help someone with thigh hip flexors as well, and I’m sure many people have been helped that way. If someone needs actual abdominal strength though I don’t think a lower threshold strategy will be as effective. Perhaps you could build strength first and then incorporate breathing, etc.
Thanks for sharing your 2 cents!
Ryan
Perfect timing! I treating a patient right now and my usual strategies didn’t seem to work, so I’m going to try this one. Thanks again!
Being an athlete all my life and having endured multiple knee surgeries due to blowing out ACL’s in both knees, I later started to develop a hip issue in my right hip due to the years of wear and tear.
These days I’m stronger and faster than ever and still competing in sports!
This site fb.me/7iW9sE50u/#/_EXERCISES_FOR_HIP_FLEXORS/ gave me the ability to perform at my highest level as a coach and regain the athletic ability I had lost over the years from wear and tear
Hi,
I have an exaggerated lumbar extension aka Lumbar lordosis kyphosis. It have no pain but however wanna fix my posture, do you have any advices? Im used to hold hip stretches for extended periods of time but it seems to improve a little then come back to the original posture. I would like to know more about it as Ive done a lot of exercises such as plank /glute bridges/ swiss ball exercises for hamstrings but it seems to help only temporarily.`
Yann
what is an alternative to this for someone who has severe sciatica and hx of microdiscectomy? I have this issue of my hip flexers doing all the work and not my core and every time i try to re-build my core i end up in a flare up with my back making me not want to do any type of movement that might make the pain worse.
Is there a link to fix the straight leg raise you mentioned towards the end of the video? Thanks!
Love this post. Mostly because it agrees with my treatment theory about abdominal stability and hip flexor tightness. I have encountered many posts online that disagree on the topic about hip flexor tightness, abdominal weakness and lower back pain. Sometimes it bothers me so much, even though I chant to myself that everyone has their own treatment perspectives. Great test, and easy to do at home.
I found this training program to reduce Hip flexibility pain. It’s a daily 10-15 minutes exercise to destress your hips.
http://bit.ly/2IppAuM
I hope can be useful for you too 🙂
Have you covered the kneecap? I had been having acupuncture for quite sometime, just for maintenance, as i hadn’t been walking much in the cold weather. The last session I did had my foot cramp when the needle went in my leg. So the next day my foot went weird. This lasted about 3 weeks and now it is fine in the foot but the knee cap area has a sharp pain when I step on it. Thank you for taking time.