Hip Flexor Stretches
Hey, it’s Jennifer, and today I want to talk about hip flexors and the best ways to stretch your hip flexors.
Usually we refer to a group of muscles that flexes the hip just with the general term hip flexors. But there’s actually lots of different individual muscles at the hip, and they all do slightly different things. So to really get at one particular muscle, you’d want to stretch it in different ways. If you have tight hip flexors and you’re not feeling super satisfied with the standard hip flexor stretch, maybe try one of these little adjustments and see if that works better for you.
The big picture is, you want to figure out if the muscle that is tight at your hip is a muscle that lives only at the hip joint, or if it’s crossing the hip and the knee. So the main hip flexor is iliopsoas. It’s actually another two muscles that we kind of put together in the name. But to test your iliopsoas, you’ll want to get into a half kneeling position. Tuck your pelvis under like you’re a puppy, tucking your tail between your legs. And then lean forward into that stretch.
If you get more of a stretch as you lean forward, then a muscle that only lives at your hip is tight. So that would be a good iliopsoas stretch. If you want to get it a little bit more, iliopsoas also does external rotation. So to stretch you want to do the opposite motion. You would internally rotate your hip, which means your foot’s going to kind of swing out a little bit. Tuck your pelvis under and then lean forward. If you want to add a little bit extra, you can reach up with your arm. So that is stretching iliopsoas.
Another muscle that lives just at the hip, that is a hip flexor, is pectinous. That one also adducts the hip. It brings your leg closer to midline. To stretch that, you would widen your leg away from midline. So just scoot your other leg to the side a little bit and lean into it that way.
And then finally, another muscle that lives only at the hip, is called TFL. That’s more on the outside of your hip, and that’s going to internally rotate and karate kick out in terms of its action. So to stretch that again, you’re going to kind of tuck your pelvis under, but you can externally rotate your hip. Which means send your foot to the other direction. If we’re straight on, we’re sending it towards the other side. And then cross over, so that this leg is getting closer to midline. And kind of sink into it that way. You should feel a stretch a little more on the outside of your hip than the previous stretch.
So just to review, to stretch muscles that are just at the hip, you’re going to tuck your pelvis under and sink forward. Option to internally rotate the hip, tuck your pelvis and lean forward. And then you can externally rotate the hip. Scoot out to the side a little bit and cross over to the other side.
Then we also want to test if our tight hips actually coming from muscles that cross the knee and the hip. So the main one is the quad. And then there’s another one called Sartorius that comes angled diagonally across your thigh.
To see if your quads are actually the tighter muscle, you’ll start the same. In a half kneeling position, tuck your pelvis. But then get super tall and maybe even lean back. And if you feel that stretch more than when you lean forward, then it’s actually a muscle that’s crossing the hip and the knee that’s tight. Because you’re starting to pull it tight across your knee when you lean back this way. So you can kind of just stay straight on. And lean back to get a quad stretch.
Or to get Sartorius again, you’ll kick your foot out a little bit so internally, rotate the hip. Tuck your pelvis under and lean back. Maybe hold on for balance. And you should feel a stretch that diagonally cuts across your thigh there.
So that’s going to get your hip with the muscles that are also crossing the knee. There are actually lots of different muscles that we’re trying to stretch when we’re stretching our hip flexors. And whichever one’s tight on you, one of these variations is going to feel a little bit better, or more relieving than others. Give it a try and let us know what you think. Thanks!
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