4 practical things you can do to improve your hip flexibility.
- Sit correctly!
Believe it or not, the first is to make sure you sit correctly.
Use the backrest? Um … No!!!
Wherever possible, when you’re sitting at a desk, at the table for your meals or even on a park bench for a snack, don’t use the backrest if you can help it.
Most chairs promote poor posture.
While you might be comfortable in your ergonomic chair that fits your shape just perfectly … beware! Sitting ‘supported’ for periods of time actually stops your core from switching on. Supported sitting in the end causes poor posture and slumping. Not what most people think, is it?!
Here’s what you do:
Sit on your sit bones, test your backward and forward movement by rolling through the pelvis (remember your hips move around those ping pong balls at the top of your femurs!).
It only has to be slight. Now notice when you sit up with that slight forward pelvic roll that you can feel your sit bones on the chair.
By doing this you re-establish the lumbar curvature (which disappears when you slump). Importantly you will have no pressure at all on your coccyx or sacrum.
For want of a better description, your anus should not be on the seat, but lifted.
Make sure that your feet are flat on the ground or better still with your feet on a platform so your knees are at about hip height.
Try not to cross your legs – ever. It sets up tightness and muscular and even structural imbalances because most people have a one-sided habit!
Now notice where your weight is now that you are sitting correctly. It should be about 60% through your pelvis and the other 40% through your legs and feet.
Guess what else you can notice?
* You have more space in your abdomen for better function.
* You can focus on engaging your core muscles because people who slump generally aren’t engaging their core.
* Your diaphragm has more space to move.
* Your shoulders move down and back into a more ideal position.
* Your throat will open.
* You can breathe more easily.
Yes but what does this have to do with the hips?
Well, a lot! In this position you clearly have more benefits than you can poke a stick at.
Plus you are in a better position to bend forward, pick things up for example and then sit back up again with safety and integrity.
Just remember that you can activate your back muscles by pressing down through your feetwhen you sit back up again. Your feet and legs and back take some weight rather than just your lower back muscles working.
Maybe your hamstrings are very tight or your lower back feels strain, both making it hard to roll your pelvis forward. Sitting the way I describe may be just plain difficult to sustain.
So, if sitting correctly isn’t easy, don’t worry, it will take some practice. You have to practise the habit to develop the foundation and restore balance to your body.
Oh, an aside: I am not saying you have to sit actively every single moment. Sometimes you just want or need to relax and do a little slumping! Just limit ‘the slump’ depending on context. Sit properly in an office chair (with very short breaks where you get up and move around or ‘slump’ for a minute here or there). Watching TV might see you shift to lounging for longer than you sit upright!
- Walk correctly!
Next is to walk correctly.
We started looking at that last time. Bring your awareness to walking and the mobility required in your hips to do so.
Have some attention on the way your feet contact the ground.
Walk with a rolling motion through your foot that starts with first contact at the heel and moves around the outside of the foot and ends with the big toe contacting last.
Keep lifting up through the ankles. Please review my video for some more details and visuals on this important technique.
- Work hip openers into your hot yoga practice
The third and fourth tips are specific yoga tips.
If your hips are too tight, yoga will help you make structural changes in the area. Now, there are different schools of thought on how to gain flexibility.
Should you get it through functional and active stretches or through static (passive) stretches?
I believe that if you are doing your hot yoga with correct technique then you are definitely gaining your flexibility through functional movements, actively stretching muscles and employing the body’s natural mechanisms to enhance it. I have hundreds of techniques and I show you specifically how to do that in my manual, by the way.
In part 1 of this newsletter we looked at how your leg (femur) externally rotates during walking when you push off the ground.
If your hips are tight then learning how to release and stretch the external rotators of the leg will help you enormously. Your pelvis will be freer and you will be able to bend forward more easily.
So your third tip is to keep on doin’ what you’re doin’ and that is practise hot yoga! My forum (free) and my websites and my manual will always help you work out if you are doing everything you can to practise safely and with best technique.
The classic 26 +2 poses are great for this. As long as you are following precision practice principles (and there are no extenuating circumstances) then you will benefit.
A specific technique is one you can use in Standing Separate Leg Intense Stretching pose.
When you set up for this pose as long as you don’t have acute conditions of the lower back or sciatica, then point your toes inward as much as 45 degrees and help free up your hips.
You may find this technique useful for other forward bends you could be doing out of class. So to improve your forward bends (and of course hip mobility) stretching your hamstrings is important but equally so is stretching your external rotators.
- Use a variety of hip opening stretches … here are 3 of my favorites
As I said you get your dynamic work in class. At any other time and especially after class when you are good and warm I recommend you do some long duration stretches to tease the hips open.
This is tip number 4 and these are often referred to now as yin yoga poses.
I think that these yin style stretches work extremely well to complement your regular practice.
There are some excellent poses that are perfect for opening your hips and seem to work even better when you are good and warm after a hot yoga class.