Have you checked your hips lately?

Have you ever taken your car in to get an alignment, if you haven’t recently I would recommend it. This can significantly improve the life of your tire by decreasing wear and tear on your tire and car. Where am I going with this and how does this relate to my back? Our hips control the alignment of out body while moving, if one is tight and not moving optimally it can affect our body mainly our back, so check your hips to fix your back. Our body is an efficient machine but like any machine it needs regular maintenance and care to perform at its best.

Tightness in the hips can cause up to rotate at the bottom of a squat, or other movements with your feet on the ground. This hip tightness then causes us to use abnormal movement patterns, that can not only lead to increased stress on the low back but also the knees and ankles. Here is an easy way to check and see if you have any hip limitations.

Hip rotation check:

Now that you have check to see what direction you are limited with, we can go through some exercises to fix it. With this type of hip limitation consistency is key to getting results. We are going to focus on hip internal rotation (when seated foot goes out) which I see most often. These are great exercises for external rotation (when seated foot goes in) limitations as well.

Band PA-

Place the band high on the back of the hip just below the glutes and move back as tolerated. Tight leg should be back, hips should push forward with an active core to take stress off of low back. This should be held for 1-2 minutes.

Band IR-

Place the band high on the inside of the groin and move out as tolerated. band leg should be up and close to the band anchor point. While kneeling push the knee in tell a stretch is felt, let the band pull and try to relax the hip. This should be held for 1-2 minutes.

Hip flexor AR-

Place KB just inside the bone on the front of the hip, with the knee bent. Then straighten out the leg 6-10 times and with the knee bent let the knee drop to the side 6-10 times.

Now that we have gotten things mobile we need to get the muscle working to keep the changes that we have made.

Band Side Steps-

Place band around the ankle (if that is to hard move it up), turn toes slightly in. Start feet about hip width and step out to around shoulder width.

Bridging-

Start with both legs on the ground and focus on activating glutes with minimal hamstring activation. As you progress and can perform double leg exercises with minimal hamstring activation start preforming this exercise with one leg. Perform 2-3 sets of 8-12 reps or until hamstring become more active or glutes fatigue.

BONUS!

Squat warm up routine. Check out the video to find out more.