Hip Strength & Mobility Flow
Hey guys!
Today I just want to take you through a very, very quick little hip mobility flow. We can call it that.
These exercises been around forever. You probably have seen them. But I want to take you through kind of a progression so that you can start working on your hip internal and external rotation.
So the first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to sit down.
Hip Strength & Mobility Flow – Warming Up
It’s usually better to warm up a little bit before you do this. If you go in really cold, you may find yourself quite stiff depending on your hip mobility, but we’re going to start off in what we call this 90/90 squat position.
Some people call it a Z squat.
Some people call it a mermaid. Doesn’t matter to me. Just make sure you have one foot in front other foot behind and we’re basically at this kind of 90 degree angle setup.
Number one in the progression is just leg switches.
All right. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to make this easier. We’re going to lean back, put both hands behind us, take some pressure off the hips, and we’re just simply going to start off with some very, very easy hip internal and external rotation.
You’ll probably slide around a little bit. That’s all very normal. Just keep working to a slightly tighter frame as you can.
So, like I said, we start off usually two hands back.
If you can’t sit comfortably here, you can also always elevate your but – sit up on a couple of blocks. That will make it easier if your hips are super problematic. You can also just do these slight switches starting in a chair.
The main thing is just start doing a little bit of mobilization.
Hip Strength & Mobility Flow – Lateral Mobilizations
From here, I like to now add in little bit more intensity to this.
So we’re going to lean forward. We’re going to grab our foot, drag our body toward our foot, come down, back toward our knee. So we’re just again doing a little bit of lateral mobilization. You’ll feel that in your hamstrings, your hip and also maybe your low back.
Then we will switch. We’ll repeat that.
You just kind of keep moving at a comfortable level of intensity.
Hip Strength & Mobility Flow – Coordinate With Breathing
From there, we switch back, both hands go to the outside of the body.
I’m just moving down toward the ground adding a little bit of rotation making sure that you’re adding your breathing into it and repeat that over here.
Alright now that we’ve done that, I like to go back once again, just make sure the hips are relaxed after we have accomplished some general mobilization.
We’re now going to take the hands away.
We’re going to turn this into a breathing exercise. So inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.
Just go through, again, 5 to 10 switches to each side turning this more into not just a hip mobilization, but also a breathing coordination exercise.
After we’ve done two hands back, no hands, I now like to add in some additional movement.
Hip Strength & Mobility Flow – Driving the Hips
So at this stage, we’re going to point the toes we’re going to drive up. So we’re pushing the hips forward, sit back down, switch, point, drive up and back down.
So gently just making this kind of a very nice comfortable side to side flow, we’re incorporating our breathing, and again just continuing to work on that internal, external rotation through the hips.
Hip Strength & Mobility Flow – Getting More Athletic
Now the last stage, I like to think of as more of a athletic version, because what we want to do,
is to do some head and neck differentiation.
So right now I’ve been keeping my head basically in the center. What we’re going to do now is if my legs go to the left, my head will go to the right.
If you want to practice this, first hands go back.
So now my legs are going to my left side. My head is going to the right side. As I go the opposite direction, I’m now just making sure I’m getting some head and neck movement that is counter to what my hips are doing.
In most sports we wind up having to do what we call upper body-lower body differentiation,
and often cervical and thoracic spine differentiation where my head is maybe to the left as my body… as my body begins to rotate left but then my head will continue to track to the right.
So we’re always trying to figure out how do we incorporate these very simple coordination exercises into different mobility flows.
So you first do that with your hands back and then you follow that up with now no hands inhale, exhale.
Inhale, exhale. Nothing to it.
Hip Strength & Mobility Flow – Summary
All right. So if you spend maybe 2-3 minutes on this, up to five minutes, I think you’ll get a really, really nice mobilization of your hips and your low back, and like I said, it’s also going to give you some small amount of work with your visual and vestibular coordination and that differentiation process.
Enjoy.
