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Calling all desk-sitters: All that sedentary time watching a display screen is a big contributor to the nagging decrease backache that’s been annoying you. That is most likely nothing you haven’t heard earlier than, however do you know it won’t be your again that’s truly the problem? It’s your hip flexors.
If you sit, your hip flexors stay in a contracted state. Extended sitting may cause these muscular tissues to shorten and shrink, limiting your potential to elongate the muscular tissues and absolutely straighten at your hips while you’re lastly upright once more. So, what are you to do? Yoga, after all. You should utilize your observe to offset the consequences of all that sitting, stretch your hip flexors, and relieve related again ache.
Anatomy of Your Hip Flexors
A number of hip flexor muscular tissues cross the entrance of the hip and create hip flexion once they contract by pulling the thighs and chest towards one another. Most likely crucial hip flexor is the iliopsoas. It’s truly composed of two deep muscular tissues: the iliacus and the psoas.
The psoas runs alongside the backbone and attaches to the perimeters of the lumbar vertebrae. The iliacus originates on the inside bowl of the pelvis. Each muscular tissues cross the ground of the pelvis and insert on the inside higher femur (thigh bone). As a result of the muscular tissues are buried so deep, it’s simple to grasp why there might be confusion about their location and function in on a regular basis life. However these muscular tissues are extraordinarily essential on the subject of making certain your stability, stability, postural alignment, and full vary of movement.
If you stand, the hip flexors contract as you elevate your leg while you stroll, run, come right into a lunge, step up stairs, and so many different actions. If you end up mendacity flat in your again, the hip flexors can both elevate your leg, like while you draw your knees towards your chest, or elevate your chest right into a sit-up. In yoga, Boat Pose (Navasana) is very efficient for strengthening the iliopsoas as a result of it calls for that the muscle isometrically contract to carry the load of the legs and higher physique.
How Hip Flexors Lose Flexibility
Most issues with the hip flexors don’t originate in a scarcity of energy however in a scarcity of flexibility. To grasp how these muscular tissues lose their flexibility, think about somebody with a damaged arm whose bent elbow is encased in a plaster solid. When the solid is eliminated after a number of weeks, the muscular tissues, tendons, ligaments, and even pores and skin across the elbow can have shortened, and the elbow gained’t instantly straighten. It’s going to take the affected person a number of weeks of stretching to revive the complete vary of movement.
Equally, if the hip is consistently stored in a flexed place, akin to with extended sitting, the hip flexors will shorten and shrink, limiting your potential to totally prolong your hip.
Points Brought on by Tight Hip Flexors
If the iliopsoas and different hip flexors are tight, they pull down and ahead on the pelvis, which tilts the pelvis ahead and compresses the decrease again. Image a person standing with the entrance of his pelvis tilting ahead and his tailbone lifting. To face upright, he has to overarch his decrease again. Anatomically, that is referred to as hyperextension; generally, it’s referred to as “swayback.” Extended standing or sitting on this place will increase stress on the aspect joints of the decrease backbone, which in flip can contribute to arthritis in these joints.
With the most effective of intentions, yoga college students typically create a muscle imbalance that contributes to this troublesome anterior (ahead) pelvic tilt. Most yoga practitioners work lengthy and laborious to enhance their hamstring flexibility however spend a lot much less time stretching their hip flexors.
Ultimately, the hamstrings lengthen considerably, whereas the hip flexors enhance solely barely. The outcome: The comparatively tighter hip flexors tip the pelvis ahead as a result of the comparatively longer hamstrings not exert an equal counterpull on the sitting bones of the pelvis.
If the hip flexors are tight, the ensuing anterior pelvic tilt and lumbar hyperextension may cause issues along with again ache, together with issue in standing yoga poses akin to Warrior 2 (Virabhadrasana II) and Triangle Pose (Trikonasana), by which the first leg motion is opening to the perimeters as a substitute of flexing ahead or extending again.
Tight hip flexors may create challenges in poses requiring full extension (straightening) of the hip joint. These poses embrace backbends akin to Bridge Pose (Setu Bandha Sarvangasana) and Upward-Dealing with Bow Pose (Urdhva Dhanurasana) and standing poses like Warrior 1 (Virabhadrasana I) and Warrior 3 (Virabhadrasana III)). In all of those poses, tight hip flexors may cause painful compression within the decrease again.
4 Greatest Hip Flexor Stretches to Relieve Ache
Recurrently training hip flexor stretches is essential to counterbalance the extended hip flexion of sitting for hours.
1. Warrior 1 (Virabhadrasana I)
Warrior Pose 1 could be a hip flexor stretch. As you’re standing with one leg ahead and one leg again, place your fingers on the entrance pelvis bones. You must be capable of really feel a small, spherical protuberance on both sides, referred to as the anterior superior iliac backbone, or ASIS.
The ASISes are good indicators of the lean of the pelvis. On the again leg, the iliopsoas will attempt to pull the pelvis and lumbar backbone down and ahead into an anterior tilt. To counter this, use your fingers to elevate the ASISes. Maintain this as you bend your entrance knee, retaining your again knee straight and your again heel grounded. Really feel the iliopsoas lengthen and visualize the backbone lifting out of the pelvis.
You may also work with the pelvic alignment in Warrior 1 by bringing your consciousness to your decrease again and the again of your pelvis. Maintain or strap or belt round your waist. As you progress into Warrior 1, don’t let your ASISes drop down and ahead. As a substitute, transfer your again into the belt, transfer your tailbone down away from the belt, and elevate your backbone out of the belt. The belt turns into a degree of orientation that will help you align your pelvis and get a deep iliopsoas stretch.
2. Full or Half Reclining Hero Pose (Supta Virasana)
One other hip flexor muscle is the rectus femoris. When it’s tight, it could restrict hip flexion and trigger issues in yoga poses. It’s one of many quadriceps muscle on the entrance of the thigh and it originates close to the ASIS, runs down the middle of the thigh, and inserts on the shinbone (tibia) slightly below the knee. When the rectus femoris contracts and shortens, it not solely extends or straightens the knee, it additionally flexes the hip.
To stretch the rectus femoris, you want a pose that flexes the knee and extends the hip, like Reclining Hero Pose. As you sit down between your heels and lie again on this pose, the rectus femoris lengthens.
To stretch the rectus femoris with out compressing the decrease again, place a bolster or folded blankets comfortably below your again. You may also do Half Reclining Hero Pose, by which you sit up with one leg bent and the opposite leg prolonged straight in entrance of you. You may sit on a bolster, block, or folded blanket to permit more room.
3. King Arthur’s Pose
This pose attracts on the identical alignment as Warrior 1 however whereas kneeling so there’s much less demand on the muscular tissues to stabilize you as you’re stretching.
As you come right into a Low Lunge dealing with away from a wall, place your again foot in opposition to the wall. Place your palms in your entrance knee and straighten your backbone straight up whereas permitting your tailbone to launch down. You must really feel a robust stretch alongside the entrance of your left thigh.
You may take a folded blanket beneath your knee for cushioning or observe the identical pose standing by putting your hand on a chair, counter, or wall and bending one leg behind you and greedy it together with your hand or a strap.
4. Mountain Pose (Tadasana)
In case you have a tendency to face with a swayback, or an exaggerated curve in your decrease again also referred to as lordosis, growing consciousness of your hip flexors is very essential.
In Mountain Pose (Tadasana), observe lifting the ASISes, subtly shifting your tailbone down, and lifting your lumbar backbone. Putting a belt or strap round your waist, as you probably did in Warrior 1, could assist enhance your consciousness of your pelvic alignment on this pose.
Usually folks attempt to right a ahead tilt of the pelvis by partaking their stomach muscular tissues. However gripping your abdominals gained’t management the anterior pelvic tilt when you have tight hip flexors—not even in easy standing postures. It additionally tends to constrict your breath.
Practising hip flexor stretches, particularly after a protracted day of sitting, may help you discover area in your pelvis—and assist shield you from compression and ache in your decrease again.
This text has been up to date. Initially printed June 29, 2021.