The average global study
shows that we sit, on average, 7.7 hours per day.
That's longer than most people sleep.
Workout first, explanation second.
Take a lacrosse ball.
You can use a tennis ball, a golf ball, a softball, a baseball,
a cricket ball, a spiky ball, it doesn't matter.
Something that's going to be resembling an elbow
that's going to get dug into those hips.
Take the ball right under the middle of your butt cheek.
We're going to work through piriformis first.
Shifting around looking for tight spots.
Once you find one...
try and relax down.
Camp out on it, and let it do its magic.
From the piriformis, you're going to go up
onto the back corner of your hips,
back of your glute med, and the top of glute max,
along the ridge of your iliac crest.
From the back corner of the hip, take the ball to the front corner
and then work through that front pocket area,
top of the hip bone,
under the pointy part of your hip, working through your TFL.
I did a video about it, before.
Then try to relax.
If you feel game,
take the ball from the TFL, roll it inside that hip bone
and you roll through your psoas.
Psoas runs inside the abdomen,
so you can sort of push just on the end part of it.
Try and relax again,
and sink into the ball.
This one's not for everyone,
kind of makes you feel like you want to spew a bit.
Once the torture is finished with the ball,
it's time to do the world’s most important stretch,
your hip flexor stretch.
Grab something soft for your knee.
You want to grab something to balance on.
and we are going to do a hip flexor stretch,
up tall.
Something soft to balance...
From here, up tall, draw in your belly button.
Squeeze your back glute. In this case, it's my right glute.
You're going to tuck your butt under.
Squeeze your glute,
and then gently move forwards into the stretch.
Keep the belly engaged, the glute squeezed,
and hold that position.
30 seconds on that side,
then swap it over.
The most common mistake we see with this stretch
is people move right forwards into the stretch.
What ends up happening there is your lower back arches
and your pelvis tips forward into an anterior pelvic tilt.
In this position, your psoas is pulling your back forwards,
jamming up your spine.
Come back here.
If you keep your butt tucked under,
glute squeezed, belly button drawn in,
you won't need to move much
to hit that psoas up and hit that stretch.
Holding on to something provides balance
so you're not shaking around in the stretch.
Sit there, hold it, let that muscle relax, and let it lengthen out.
The third and final thing before you go back to the desk
is a gentle bit of glute activation.
10 squeeze and lifts,
followed by 10 bridges.
Okay, so now for some whys.
When we sit, our glutes and hamstrings
are compressed against the chair under our body weight.
This causes the blood flow to be restricted
and shuts off the muscles in our legs electrically.
It also compresses your nerves.
That piriformis muscle I mentioned,
it runs right next to your sciatic nerve.
So, if that piriformis gets tight,
it can compress on that sciatic nerve,
giving you sciatic type pain.
A lot of the time, sciatica is actually piriformis syndrome
where the sciatic nerve is trapped in that piriformis muscle.
Some release work through that piriformis
and through those tight, inhibited, weak glutes
can do wonders loosening up those hips.
If you're an athlete, loosening up your piriformis
and letting that sciatic nerve flow better
is going to do wonders for improving
your hamstring and calf tightness as well.
When it comes to the hip flexor stretch,
we're looking at one key muscle: your psoas.
It's weird, it connects to the front of your lumbar spine,
runs through over the top of your pelvis through the abdomen,
and connects onto the front of your femur.
When we sit for hours on end, it shortens up and tightens.
That bit is obvious,
but when you combine the tight psoas
with weak glutes or weak core,
what you get is an anterior tilt of the pelvis
where the pelvis starts slopping on this angle
as opposed to being level.
Over time, that's going to jam up your lower back,
tighten your hamstrings, give you a little potbelly,
and it fuels into those weak, inhibited glutes you have.
You're in a vicious cycle: tightness at the front, weakness at the back,
and you’ve got a belly.
If you don't have time for that full series, a quick 10 pelvic tilts,
rock your pelvis forwards and backwards,
can be enough to shake some tightness
and get your core woken back up.
Looks a little weird.
If you get asked, maybe say you started salsa?