Hip flexors are muscles located near the top thighs. These are a group of muscles that play a crucial role in lower body movement, allowing you to bend, swivel, walk, and kick. The hip flexor includes different muscles, such as the psoas, iliacus, rectus femoris, tensor fascia latae (TFL), and Sartorius.
Research studies show that tight hip flexors can cause sore hips, lumbar spine pain, stiffness, discomfort, and pain. If not treated on time, tight hip flexors can lead to a dysfunctional lower body, faulty biomechanics, poor posture, and pain in the lower back, knees, ankles, and feet.
Besides, studies have linked tight hip flexors to the piriformis muscle spasms and inflammation, irritating the sciatic nerves. As a result, you may feel sciatic-like pain, numbness, and tingling radiating from your lower back through the buttocks down your legs.
Although many people take over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, such as naproxen, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen to relieve hip flexor pain, these medications can cause side effects, such as drowsiness, dizziness, stomach ulcers, allergic reactions, headaches, and indigestion.
Conversely, hip flexor stretches are the best exercises to relieve tight hips. Stretching regularly can loosen your hip flexors, increase blood circulation, maintain biomechanics, and help avoid injuries. In this post, we will discuss some of the best stretches for tight hips. Read on!
Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch
The kneeling stretch lengthens your psoas and iliacus muscles. It helps relax your hips flexors, improves stability, flexibility, and reduces the risk of injuries. Not only does the kneeling stretch increase blood flow to the muscles, but it also maintains posture, range of motion and reduces inflammation. Here is how you can do this stretching exercise:
- Kneel your left knee and put your right foot on the ground or mat
- Make sure your right knee is at 90 degrees angle
- Move your hip forward while keeping your spine straight
- Lean your chest forwards and hold this position for at least 20-30 seconds
- Repeat the stretch 3-5 times with each leg
Foam Roller Stretch
The foam roller is an excellent stretch for people with tight hip flexors. It relieves muscle soreness, tightness, and inflammation. The foam roller also increases your range of motion, maintains flexibility, and provides strength to your flexor muscles. Here are the steps to perform the foam roller stretch:
- Lie down in a plank position with a foam roller beneath the abdomen
- Make sure the roller is slightly below your right hip
- Bend your knee at a 90 degrees angle while placing your leg to the side
- Keep your forearms on the floor to evenly distribute the body weight
- Stretch your right leg with your toes pointed backwards
- Keep your feet flat on the ground
- Perform forward and backward movements slowly over the roller
- Continue the movement for at least 30 seconds and repeat for the left hip
Supine Stretch
Supine stretch is an excellent therapeutic exercise that relieves tight hips, improves spinal stability, maintains lower back mobility, and even promotes digestion. Not only does supine stretch massage your internal organs, but it also enhances your musculoskeletal system, making your lower body relaxed and invigorated.
- Lie on your spine on the mat and keep your legs straight
- Your toes must point toward the ceiling
- Straighten your right leg on the mat while keeping your left knee bent
- Keep your foot flat on the mat while bending your left knee
- Make sure your fingers are laced behind the left knee
- Pull your left knee towards the torso and keep your hips and spine on the floor
- Keep your left knee close to the chest on the exhale
- For a minimum of 30 seconds, remain in this position
- Repeat the steps for the right leg
Spiderman Stretch
The Spiderman stretch lengthens various muscles groups in the abdomen, groin, and legs. It maintains your hip flexor flexibility, increases your range of motion, and strengthens your muscles to prevent future injuries. It is also an excellent warm-up exercise before a workout.
- Get into the push-up position
- Move forward with your right foot
- Bring your foot outside of your right hand to feel a good stretch
- Stay in this position for 2-5 seconds and return to the original position
- Repeat 5-10 times and perform the stretch with the left leg
- Perform 3-5 reps with each leg to strengthen your flexors
Pigeon Stretch
The pigeon stretch is an ideal exercise for both men and women with tight hips. It elongates your spine, loosens the hips flexors, groin hamstrings, and eliminates pressure on your lumbar spine to relieve pain and discomfort. Research highlights that the pigeon stretch is also useful for people with sciatica. It maintains your posture, restores alignment, and increases flexibility.
- Get into the tabletop position and move your left knee forward
- Make sure your knee is behind your left wrist
- Keep your left ankle in front of your right buttock
- Keep your right leg straight and behind you
- Straighten your left knee and keep your toes pointed
- Move your body towards the floor and hold for 10-15 seconds
- Get back to the original position by lifting your hips
- Repeat the steps on the other side
Final Words
Hip flexors are vital muscles in your body that perform a wide range of functions. If you want to learn about hips flexors and maintain strength, energy, and overall health, we recommend you to go for the Unlock Your Hip Flexors program.
It is an easy-to-use guide with detailed and evidence-based information to overcome the problem of tight hips and improve your overall health. Unlock Your Hips Flexors is a sophisticated program that offers a wide range of exercise, stretching activities, and body movements to loosen and strengthen your hip flexors.
The program focuses on overcoming health conditions like lumbar spine pain, blood circulation problems, and stiffness, numbness, sciatica, sexual problems and much more, through state-of-the-art theoretical and practical knowledge.
It offers PNF stretching, dynamic stretching, 3D core stability exercise, mobility workouts, muscle activation movements, fascia stretching, and much more. Get access to Unlock Your Hip Flexors today.
