Stretch and Strengthen:

Corrective Exercises for Hip Flexors

Corrective exercise helps personal trainers address postural and movement dysfunctions and prevent injury, such as with the hip flexors. Too much hip flexion can lead to tight hips, which causes hip flexor problems. This results in hindered exercise performance and increased risk of injury.

Many of these issues arise from muscle imbalances in the surrounding anatomy. Hip muscle action heavily influences muscles such as the glutes, hamstrings, and lumbar spine. With so many other muscle groups contributing to improper biomechanics, it is important to address the hip joint and the surrounding anatomy.

Let’s dig into common hip flexor issues and causes, plus how you can use corrective exercise to prevent or address problems with these muscles.

Common Hip Flexor Issues

Lots of factors play a role in hip pain. The most common hip flexor issues are strains, labral tears, and stress fractures. When a hip flexor experiences excessive tightness or stiffness a strain is more likely to occur. A tight hip can create an immense amount of hip pain and lead to more serious injuries. 

The first step to successfully fixing hip flexor issues is to determine what the actual issue is. You will not be able to rehabilitate an injury unless you determine where disruption is in the kinetic chain. The next step is to design a program for the actual issue at hand. Then implement the stretches, exercises, and foam rolling into your current program.

Tight Muscles

The hip flexor muscle demonstrates its main function when a person bends at the waist or raises their knee upward. These types of hip flexion movement patterns occur in both athletes and sedentary individuals.

Every athlete performs running motions, bringing their knee upward. Sedentary individuals find themselves sitting a lot in a position where the body bends at the waist. When these movements occur, the hip flexor muscles shorten. The longer the hip flexors remain in a shortened or contracted position, the tighter they become.

When a person stretches a tight hip, it could cause a strain depending on the extent of the hip flexor tightness they have built up. This can lead to more serious hip issues and even knee injuries. Maintaining hip and knee strength, mobility, and flexibility will help you avoid injury. 

Hip issues usually contribute to knee injuries and vice versa. The body is a kinetic chain where everything connects and affects each anatomical part. Knowing this will help you quickly determine the issue at hand.

Hip Injury

The more severe the injury, the higher the grade of tear. 

• Grade I: The persons hip still functions properly, but they experience a small amount of pain in the groin area.

• Grade II: The hip does not function properly but can tolerate some weight; the hip gives out every so often.

• Grade III: The person is unable to tolerate any weight at all; it is unlikely they will be able to walk. These types of tears coincide with stress fractures and you should see an orthopedic doctor immediately.

Tendonitis

Overuse of the hip also causes hip tendonitis. To differentiate between tendonitis and strains you need to discover the location of pain. If pain in the front of the hip worsens when the knee lifts towards the chest, it is most likely a strain. If pain occurs in the leg or even the back, it is most likely tendonitis.

Hip tendonitis slowly gets worse over time, whereas a strain or tear is usually immediate pain. Every person should be stretching on a routine basis to help prevent hip stiffness and to alleviate any pain that might occur in the hip joint.

Labral Tears

The acetabulum, which is known as the hip socket, is where the femur sits in the pelvis. Labral tissue covers this socket and can become irritated through excess rubbing and overuse of the hip joint. If this tissue tears it is known as a labral tear. Clicking or popping often accompanies labral tears, which cause pain in the hip and groin area. The structure of a person can also influence these types of issues, but injury and overuse are the common cause of these complications.

Causes of Weak or Tight Hip Flexors

Repetitive movement or overuse within the hip joint is a major aspect to hip flexor pain. Weak or tight hip flexors cause hip flexor injuries. It is important to understand what contributes to the weakness or tightness the hip flexors experience. If a person experiences direct damage to the hip it can cause a hip flexor injury, but overuse is the biggest reason for hip flexor tightness.

Excessive Sitting

Hip flexor tightness can come from excessive sitting and bad posture. If someone is sitting a lot throughout the day, their hip flexors remain in a flexed position for an extended period. This creates tightness and leads to inactive hip flexor muscles. When muscles are inactive, they will atrophy and become weaker. Weak hip flexors will lead to more hip flexor strains.

Picture a person who sits all day long and suddenly stands up. The entire time they were sitting their hip flexors were in a flexed position. In this flexed position the hip flexor muscles contract and shorten. When the person stands up the hip flexor muscles stretch and elongate quickly, possibly even more than the muscle can withstand. As the hip flexor quickly extends beyond the muscles’ threshold, it creates micro-tears in the muscles.

Stretching routinely will help prevent this, but you must know that any form of overstretching can also be detrimental to the hip flexor muscles. If you stretch too much, you can create micro-tears in the muscles as well.

Piriformis Muscle

The piriformis is a common muscle responsible for a lot of hip issues. The piriformis muscle is the muscle in the body that sits underneath the gluteus maximus. It is a small muscle unable to withstand the same stress larger muscles can. Many people have piriformis syndrome that amplifies hip flexor issues.

With excessive sitting the glutes become underactive and weak causing the piriformis to compensate. It is a strong, but small muscle that cannot undergo the same activities the glutes can. Therefore a person will experience pain in the hips, which can be alleviated through consistent hip flexor and piriformis flexibility exercises.

Corrective Exercise Techniques to Improve Hip Flexor Issues

Implement the following corrective exercises into your program to help with hip flexor issues. Not only will these techniques and exercises help relieve pain, but they will repair and strengthen the hip region.

Glute Bridges 

Lie flat on their back, both feet on the ground, heels close to your glutes. Raise your hips off the ground, extending the hips towards the ceiling. Contract and squeeze the glute muscles, then lower the hips back down to the starting position. This is great for strengthening the gluteal muscles and getting the body used to hip extension movement patterns.

Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch

While in a kneeling lunge position, sit up straight, pushing the hips forward. You should feel a stretch in the hip flexor of the leg that is back. This is good for stretching the hip flexor muscles to get you used to elongating. It will relieve any extra tightness or stiffness in the area that could be causing pain.

Mountain Climbers

In a pushup position bring one knee at a time to reach the elbow of the same side. Rotate to the other side. These are important for strengthening the hip flexor muscles.

Foam Rolling

Full body self-myofascial release techniques will help get rid of muscle knots and alleviate tension throughout the kinetic chain that is affecting the hip flexors. Those who have back pain or knee pain might have tight hip flexors.

Hip flexor pain will disrupt your progress, which is why you need to focus on addressing it quickly and correcting it with effective exercises.

How to Design a Corrective Exercise Program to Improve Hip Flexor Issues

If you experience pain in the lumbar spine or glutes, you must consider tight hip flexors as the problem area. Implement corrective exercise into your program to help improve hip mobility and hip flexibility and to relieve pain in the hip joint.

To design an effective corrective exercise program to address hip flexor issues, start by dedicating the beginning movement prep of each workout to exercises that target these specific areas. Incorporate a combination of stretches, movement prep exercises, and foam rolling throughout the workout.

Movement Prep

Some movement prep exercises to include before the main workout are glute bridges, bird dogs, single-leg squats, dead bugs, and mountain climbers. For the post-workout stretches, incorporate flex focus stretches like a lying hip flexor stretch. You want to perform extension type stretches as well, like a quad stretch or kneeling hip flexor stretch.

Foam Rolling

Foam rolling the upper thigh and hip flexor region will serve as a self-massage and get rid of any muscle knots. Foam roll all the surrounding muscle groups as well. Often the issue is the other tight muscle groups that pull on the hip flexors. It can also be inactive muscles that do not stimulate properly. If you release these muscles through foam rolling, you will experience immediate relief.

Securing the Trunk

Pelvic stabilization helps keep the hip muscles and hip joint in place to function properly. The pelvis is responsible for supporting the entire body and transferring weight from the upper body to the lower body. Numerous muscles attach to the pelvis making it able to perform many movements in the kinetic chain.

The psoas major is the strongest hip flexor muscle in the body and attaches the hip to the pelvis. With the Princeton University exercise list, the pelvis, hip, and glute muscle groups can be targeted effectively to help improve your hip mobility and stability.

Reference:

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