Tight Hips Won’t Go Away? Here’s Why & What To Do Instead

Mobility coach Alisa Zuravskaja shows us how: 

The most common stretching mistake

Well two most common mistakes, but they are connected. In few words:

• Passive stretching alone often fails: simply holding a hip flexor stretch for 30 seconds or so will not usually relieve persistent tightness, because it doesn’t address muscle activation, strength, or stability, and without those things, the tightness will return to try to save you from moving too far and hurting yourself.
• That in turn leads to other weaknesses: a related common mistake is, paradoxically, letting your pelvis tilt forward or your knee move too far forwards, causing the stretch to target your quadriceps more than your hip flexors. Firstly, this would not happen if the correct muscles were activated, and secondly, it means you are not even passive-stretching the muscles you need to stretch, let alone active-stretching them.

Here are three ways to do it better:

• Loaded hip flexor stretch: kneel on a comfortable surface, align your hips, tuck your pelvis under, and firmly squeeze your glute on the kneeling-leg side. If you cannot feel your glute, tense your entire back leg first, then isolate your glute by consciously relaxing the other muscles. Once engaged, press your kneeling knee into the floor without moving, to isometrically strengthen your hip flexor in a lengthened position.
  • This glute contraction encourages your nervous system to reduce tension in your hip flexor while it is being strengthened.
• Glute bridge hold: lie on your back with your knees bent, feet flat, and a cushion or yoga block between your knees. Tuck your pelvis, squeeze your glutes, then lift your hips and hold for 60 seconds. Squeezing the cushion activates your adductors, improves pelvic stability, and improves glute activation so that your hip flexors do not compensate.
  • If you feel your lower back working instead, then the best thing to do is to lower your hips slightly. If you feel your hamstrings more than your glutes, then in that case, just move your feet closer to your hips and you should be back on track.
• Dead bug exercise: lie on your back with your arms pointing towards the ceiling and your hips and knees bent to 90°. Press your lower back into the floor, exhale to draw your ribs down, and gently brace your abdomen, to activate your deep core muscles while keeping your spine still. Begin by lowering one heel slowly towards the floor, before progressing to lowering the opposite arm and leg together.
  • This one might seem like we’re going off on a tangent, but people with tight hip flexors often have poor core stability, causing the hip flexors to compensate by stabilizing the spine. Strengthening your core reduces this compensation, and thus allows your hip flexors to relax.

For more on all of this plus visual demonstrations, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

You might also like:

The Most Underrated Hip Mobility Exercise (Not Stretching)

Take care!