Are you dancing with him?
Yes, seeing how he'd do ya know? Hi folks!
I'm Bob Shrupp physical therapist. Brad Heineck physical therapist.Together, we are the most famous physical therapists on the internet. In our own opinion of course, Bob.
Trying to get that out of my mind right now, Brad dancing with a skeleton! Today Brad we're gonna
Talk about the seven best hip flexor stretches to decrease pain. And for people who sit all day, this is
Going to be a good video Brad. I commend you for it. Well, you know, once in a while
I come up with a good one! So, the old hip flexor the iliopsoas.
You know it's a mouthful in itself so what is it? It's two muscles isn't it? Right!
The biggest thing about the hip flexors to me is if you look here. We've got a nice example of one is
they
Flex the hip. They bring your knee up like this
It's connected by the hip which makes sense, but if you look at the other end of the muscle
It goes all the way up and literally connects to the spine off to the side to the spinous
Transverse processes we call so when that connects and that pulls. It's putting force on the low back.
If it's tight, it's gonna actually pull. If one's tight it's gonna pull you this way right if both are tight
It's gonna round
You wont be able to straighten all the way out.
Well your trunk forward
If they're tight it can put pressure on the low back which can help create
Or make back pain worse, so we want to keep those muscles loose. When you sit a lot
Those muscles if you have an eight-hour day you're sitting most of the day those muscles inherently overtime will
Contract and when maximized. I would be surprised with most people especially over
30 years old that your hip flexors are probably tight, and you can also get a little more
compression on the hip too.
If I don't stretch out my hip flexor, I start get a little hip pain.
So I think it serves two purposes
Helps your back and helps your hip.
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Bob you just squished Gumby
We'll get him back in he's fine
If I want to stretch that we need to take this bone, the femur bone, and extend it
Look how that stretch you have to stretching that tape right?
And that's what we want to do.
I've got seven different options to do that
There's probably people can do all seven comfortably
But there's some options because if you have knee pain or some other problems
Or if you're older, you're only gonna be able to two or three of them
Which is fine If you can do two of them,
That's really all you need to do.
So we're gonna go through seven of them pick out the ones you like best and work with them.
All right, Bob. Let's start laying down. Why not all I'll give it a try
You can do this in bed. A firmer bed is better
A carpeted floor will be best you probably don't have a plinth laying around at home
Let's get these glasses out of the way
And it's simply the old
Figure-four this doesn't go directly to the hip flexor Bob, but it gets to it and plus
It's a good stretch for the hip in general.
He's made a "four" with his legs and he's stretching this side.
The right hip is being stretched right now. It's not a pure hip flexor stretch, but
its getting in there. And it's a good stretch in general. We like it.
And it's a good one for the hip overall,
and it's easy to do.
And if you look at mine look at the height of that knee and I'll look at the height of this knee
this one's a little tighter so I might stretch that one a little more you can also go into this position and
I like doing this one.
Feels really good, and for putting your socks on in the morning this will help you get that the functional motion
Heighth vs Height. (Heighth: not a real word)
You say heighth hello Bob. I don't know if that's a Wisconsin thing. I don't know either Bob
That's a good question though. We're not English majors so we really aren't people to talk to. Go to the next one
Okay, now this one
Directly goes to the hip flexor. Yeah scoot your bottom off to the edge of the bed.
Don't fall off the bed. We don't want anybody saying they fell off the bed because of us. Keep your shoulders on
But get the right hip slightly off and let this leg
Drop down like this. Brad tuck your shirt in. Oh! Bob am I showing skin?
Now I'm feeling that stretch. Now Bob if I bend my knee,
It stretches more. It's a different muscle, it gets that rectus femoris if I straighten it out
It's gonna get more that iliopsoas, and they're both good to stretch. And if you want to stretch it even more,
Watch what his leg did when he pulled it
see how it's coming up and
Brad as you mentioned before you can always tell if you're stretching the right muscle by what the clothing is doing.
You can see the clothing has tightened up in here, and so it's stretching the muscle underneath it
But you can see his is a little bit tight because it's coming up. When I pull this knee up the pelvis goes
Up this way and everything goes with it
If you have a partner or someone and they want to give you an extra stretch
I do this to a patient. I'll just gently push down now that's gonna get the rectus
Why don't you push that above the knee Bob. There and now we feel different stretch there more in that
Iliopsoas and you're not gonna get aggressive. It should be a gentle, comfortable, stretch
No sharp pain whatsoever. You'd want to do it on both sides. You'd want to flip around and do the other side too
Bob do you want to show the one prone? That one doesn't work for me.
Single or do you want me to do, double. Do press-ups. Just a regular press up.
Now this one stretches both the Iliopsoas and the hip flexors
And your back a little bit. So you're getting two things.And your hands are underneath your shoulders
And you're keeping your pelvis down
You're not lifting up like this, otherwise you're not getting any stretch so you're stretching like this.
This is good for the back for most people and it also helps stretch out those
Hip flexors which is also good for your back
There's a reason. I'm not doing this one
I've got spondylolisthesis so if you have that or if you have spinal stenosis and a little back. Those are the two
cases that you don't want to do this and you'll know because it hurts
It's not comfortable. With some people even if you don't have those two things
This is uncomfortable
But over time it starts to feel better right and you can hold it
for a good long stretch here too for a prolonged stretch
Do you want me to show one leg then too?
So you can also just go off the edge of the bed like this and have one foot down
And you're gonna bring one leg like this and then you're gonna lift up like this alright, so
This is a little more aggressive. This is something you're probably going to be a little more mobile and
Fit because it is a little more aggressive
It goes at the muscle at a little bit different angle, so
Again, I think it's good that we're showing all the different ways to do this because
Like you said there's some that may work for some and not others. You want to go prone again?
I just want to finish off in that position. If you happen to have a yoga strap, this happens to work
well. You get it around the foot here and
And then you can use one of the loops here to go ahead and you can pull forward, real easy work
Works out reall quite well gets the quadricep
I mean the rectus femoris. It's a hip flexor
And it goes all the way down to the knee. If you go up on your elbows
Now i'm getting my hip flexor too, so this is for those real flexible people
that really want to get even more aggressive with that stretch, but again this should feel like a comfortable normal stretch
No sharp pain. You can also do this on your side.
So I'm pulling it like this and now I can go way back like this
So I'm getting the hip flexor. Works out quite well.
I know people are going to be wondering: how many repetitions
Are due or how long do I hold it. There's different theories on that. Bob
and I usually like to do the pressure on, pressure off so I'm pushing pressure on I'm giving a little early release and
Sometimes I even get a little resistance and then I push it back further.
We like to put the pressure on pressure off and about that
So it's like a second or two on and relax. Some people like to hold
15, 20, up to 30 seconds that's an option as well
Then you're only gonna do it once, maybe twice
versus 10 repetitions with the pressure on pressure off. The yoga strap
or the stretch out strap is down below in our Amazon list, so if you have any
interest in purchasing one. They're not very expensive for you.
Okay, now. We did the next one. He already showed where you're standing with the knee on the edge of the bed
Oh sure, I'm sorry. I skipped ahead. That's all right Bob. Okay, because people will be counting yeah
That counted one so we're at number six now
Okay, okay. Now. This one is similar to what we just did but you're standing. Just grab your foot here
I actually to do this I have to actually grab the opposite side
Does that make sense? I grab so it's my left arm, right leg, and that's how it works for me
Actually that works for me, too. I can go either way, but actually I kind of like going crazy
I can't do this one
I can I guess I can do it
But it's a little more difficult. You can see everyone's gonna be a little different
There are some people who just will not be able to do this because of the balance or they're tight so this is a
Good one to do right before a race, and you don't want lay down in the wet grass
Look at this knee. If it's up here
That's not gonna work as well as you pulling it way back. And this one I like to do the pressure on
pressure off, that's how I work it with this particular stretch
Okay, the last one Bob. We're gonna need a pillow
You know if you're on the grass you can do it on the grass you need something soft
So your knee, if you're on a hard floor, it's gonna be uncomfortable
You're gonna do it up there okay? Yeah, this is gonna be done
on the floor, but it's easier to see this way
And you hear this is really a nice demonstration of a nice
So Bob's keeping his torso nice and tall as the stick shows, and if you look at his femur
It's like this
So he's got a really nice hip
extension. Your hips aren't that tight, that's because you do it a lot, right
Like you say we can do it this way too. Yep
It's a little bit different, I don't like it as much
Do the other leg work so people can see
There you go
See it from the other side and then bring this arm up out of the way there
You can see his trunk is there,
right there's the hip extension that we're looking for. So there you go all right, 7 stretches for the hip in a nutshell and
Try them all and do which one you like the best. Thanks for watching.