- Hey there team, it's James here from Kinetic Revolution.
If you're new to the channel,
my job is to help you run stronger and run injury-free.
Today, I want to show you an exercise
to strengthen your hip flexors.
We often talk about tight hip flexors
and that's really important
that we spend time mobilizing our hips,
but we need to remember sometimes muscles get tight
because they're weak.
And there's a hip flexor march exercise
which I recorded a few years ago
back on the earlier videos on this YouTube channel,
but I want to show you another variation
using, again, a resistance band
for strengthening your hip flexors.
So for this one, we're going to be ground based using
(taps box) a box.
This could equally be a chair or a bench,
anything to elevate your feet with.
Gonna use the resistance band around your feet
and I'll show you what we're gonna do.
So laying on your back, firstly we need to make sure
that you are nicely in contact with the ground
with your lower back.
You should not be able to get your hands
between the mat and the arch of your lower back.
It should be completely flat there.
Draw your belly button in, feel that contact.
From there, I like to just put my elbows down to my side
and my hands on my lower ribcage
just to provide a little bit of stability.
And in this position, what I want to do,
keeping the ankles dorsiflexed,
by that I mean pull the toes up towards your shin.
We're gonna leave one foot
on the
box
or chair or bench
and the other we're gonna pull the knee up
towards your chest,
feeling the resistance of the band as we do so.
We're gonna work through 10 on one side,
10 on the other.
Now as we work through this movement,
I generally encourage people to come up on the count of one,
hold it for one, and down on the count of one.
So one,
hold,
down.
One,
hold,
down.
Working through 10 of those
and then we'll swap sides.
Now as you get fatigued,
what's important to remember
is that you still need to come up
through 90 degrees of the hip.
Okay we need to get up to this position
where we're beyond the right angle at the hip here.
Reason being that it's only really
as we come up through 90 degrees
that we really start to challenge iliopsoas,
one of those big, important deep hip flexor muscles.
Lower than 90 degrees
we're starting to get a little bit more rectus femoris,
but only up in this high degree of hip flexion
do we really start to strengthen iliopsoas.
So as you fatigue, don't allow yourself
to forfeit a little bit of range of motion.
If need be and you only get to eight or seven
before you get to that point
where you can't pull quite as high, then stop there
and over time you'll get better and better at it.
Three sets of 10 on each side is a great place to aim
and from a resistance band point of view,
again have a bit of a play.
Usually a moderate band is a good place to start,
but again pick the band that's going to be representative
of your current level of strength.
The reason why I've got you up on a box here,
equally it could be chair, it could be a bench as I've said,
is because it puts you in a better position
to be able to keep that lower back flat to the ground.
We really want to be able to maintain
this controlled position through the pelvis
and lumbar spine.
Do let me know how you get on with exercise.
It's a really simple drill
but really really effective for strengthening
those hip flexors.
Of course, if you are new here
and you haven't subscribed to our channel yet,
make sure you hit that subscribe button.
That way you won't miss any of our future videos
to help you run stronger, run injury-free.
I'll speak to you soon.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments
and I will get back to you.
Bye now.