It’s crucial that you have good hip mobility, not just for sporting performance, but even for everyday life. A simple restriction on range of motion at the hip, can magnify itself over the years to become a significant issue, particularly if you spend a lot of time sitting. So it’s crucial to rediscover the mobility you were born with. At Flexibod, our Agilis helps you unlock your hips while you sit. However, if you don’t have your hands on our Agilis here’s a great article by Shelley Harper that looks at the importance of hip mobility…
Hip mobility: The Importance
The hip girdle area is anatomically complex. There are over 15 muscles that are associated with the hip area, each working together to give the hip joint mobility. As you can predict, having a tight muscle or group of muscles can impede full range of motion. Thus, improving your hip mobility will not only increase athletic performance, but can also help prevent lower back pain/injury and boost explosive movements. Good hip flexibility encourages an athlete to perform movements more efficiently and allow them to assume biomechanically effective body positions in all sports, thus increasing athletic performance. Lower back injury is a common injury among athletes, especially in the weight room when proper technique is not executed. If mobility and strength in the hips are limited, an athlete will then compromise wtih lifting weight with their back muscles. These muscles are susceptible to injury, especially when lifting heavy loads. Lastly, having a full range of motion in the hips can help increase an athlete’s power. This can be seen through a more powerful dive off the blocks in swimming, or jumping over hurdles with greater ease at a track meet.
Ways to improve hip mobility
Taking the time to add in a few hip mobility exercises is a simple and easy way to help move toward your athletic goals. First, foam rolling your quadriceps and hamstrings is a simple and easy way to encourage hip flexibility. These large muscle groups originate from the hipbones and thus affect hip flexibility if they are tight. Other stretches include the “Pigeon stretch” demonstrated by Olympian Kim Vandenberg in this Bridge Athletic Video at 3:15, where you extend one leg behind you and cross the other in front helping to release locked-up hips. In addition, the scorpion stretch is a great way to release tension in the hips and is performed in this Bridge Athletic Video at 3:00. Stretching your hip-flexor muscles is vital and can be done by placing one knee on the ground and having the leg at 90˚ with your foot on the ground. Slowly push your pelvis forward until you feel a hip-flexor stretch in the leg with the knee on the ground. Lastly, the simple butterfly stretch can help stretch your hips and inner thighs.
Final Thoughts
As a society, we spend hours sitting in an office or car, at school or at home and during breakfast, lunch and dinner. This lengthy time spent sitting contributes to a lack of hip mobility due to tight hip muscles, especially the hip-flexors. Simple hip mobility exercises such as the pigeon stretch or butterfly stretch are great ways to release this tension that we build up from sitting so often. Whether you spend five minutes after your workout to stretch out your hips, or perform these stretches during commercial breaks during your nightly TV routine, five minutes is all it takes. I personally find that stretching while brushing my teeth before bed is a great way for me to get in my hip mobility stretches and of course keep my teeth clean!