If you're all sat during the day you might notice that your legs get a little
bit stiff and tight. What can often get missed with stretches out there is hip rotation
so we've put together some options to help you increase hip rotation.
I'd suggest you pick and choose which
option is best for you, it might not suit everybody for different reasons.
Even if you're able to try one of them once a day, that's way better than not doing anything.
My name's Claire. I'm a physiotherapist from PhysioFit Health.
For this exercise, you can be sat on the floor or the mat. You're highly likely to
need a rolled-up towel for it as well. The position that you're going to get
yourself in is sitting with the knees bent. A couple of things to watch out for
when you're in this position, your feet are swept to the side, you may feel that
you're tilting yourself over to the left, which is where you need the rolled-up towel.
You want to level your hips and pelvis out so you're going to take that
rolled-up towel and you're gonna put it on the one side that is closest to the floor.
The right side of the hip might be up and the left down, if you sit on the
towel what it will be doing is leveling out the hips and the pelvis.
Ideally in this position, you want the the right and the left side to be nice
and level and then you want the spine to be upright.
There are a couple of things that you can do, extra stretches in this position,
but for now, we'll just keep it like this as it really starts to focus on these hips.
There's a couple of variations to look for which involve
just a slightly different position of where that right leg is.
The further forward that the knee is in front of the hip then the easier it will be.
If you get this knee out further to the side, you will probably find that you
start to lean, as it gets a little bit more challenging and winds the hip up quite a lot.
I'd suggest finding a comfortable position for you in this position,
one that you can hold for at least 20 or 30 seconds,
as that sustained time will just get the muscles and the tendons used to this position.
Once you've tried this exercise with your legs and knees in one direction,
then move around and then you are going to repeat in that opposite direction.
Hold it for 20 or 30 seconds. Ideally repeating 4 or 5 times
but even if you can get into this position once a day for 20 seconds I think it's a good thing.
Another way you can get some hip rotation, again, sitting on the floor or
on your mat. Get these legs out in front of you, you can support your upper body
with your hands behind you. Working on your left leg you're gonna put that left
foot a little bit out to the side, so wider than the body width and then you
are going to rotate and get that knee across the midline of the body.
You're wanting your hips to stay as still as possible but you're trying to get that
knee as far over as you can do, so you get a stretch sensation around the hips and the pelvis.
If you get that stretch sensation just like this, that's great
hold it for 20 seconds. If you don't feel anything you may just need to put a
little bit of overpressure and you can use your other leg for that and you can
get that other leg over the knee and then use the leg as pressure just to
push into the stretch a little bit more.
You may be questioning where to put that
foot, whether the foot goes further away from the body or further in towards the body.
What I would say is it doesn't matter and you actually want to do a
combination of all of them. The further away you go then it's going to work the
hip in a bit more of a straight position, whereas if you bring that foot really
close to you then the hip is bent just a little bit more. If you go from your foot
being close to you and work all the way out so that it's straight, you're just
going to be working that hip through its full range of movement, which is great.
Once you've done that on your left side then you're going to repeat on the right side.
The same thing, put that foot wide, wider than the body, take that knee
across over to the left and if you need to then you can use your left leg to
push into the stretch a little bit more.
Start by putting your knee on the chair so that your shin is resting as much as
it can be on the seat of the chair, but my foot is over the edge of the chair so
it's hooking on to the other side. Step forwards with your other leg and make
sure your hips are facing forwards to start with.
You're going to rotate the foot out to the side while keeping your knee and your hips facing forwards.
This in itself might cause a stretch on the hip area of the knee that's on the chair.
If it doesn't cause a stretch, what you want to do is with the hips, you want
to rotate the hips as a whole around to the side of the leg that's on the chair.
Face forwards to ease off the stretch, rotate into the stretch.
Hold it for your 20 seconds. Ideally, you're keeping the foot still, you're keeping the knee still
and the idea is that you're pivoting around the hip.
Find your stretch. Hold it for 20 seconds ease off and repeat 4 or 5 times.
Please let us know if you have any questions.
Definitely, share the video if you know anyone that would find
these options useful and if you know anyone that's sat down for a lot of time
and could benefit from just focusing a little bit more on their hip rotation.