Everyone Hates the Hip Flexors

Everyone seems like they have a personal vendetta against the hip flexors.

But the hip flexors are just a muscle group - like any other in the body - that contract to perform a function.

I’m not exactly sure where this fascination with stretching hip flexors comes from, but it seems most likely that it has to do with the fact that most people are sitting on their assess for 10+ hours every day.

So, we’ve set a muscle group up to fail, and then we blame them for being “tight”. So, what do we do? Apply a band-aid to the problem with stretching!

Instead of stretching, which ultimately won’t change the stimulus for creating “tight” hip flexors to begin with, I contend that we can do two things to alleviate our hips feeling restricted:

1. Walk more.

2. Training the hip flexors directly.

Walking

Walking more is self-evident insofar as the prescription.

But if you’re stuck to a desk-job (a lot of my work is at a desk), here are some practical recommendations for how you can alleviate some of that tightness you feel:

• Get an adjustable standing desk. There are a million of these on amazon. The one I use is this one, which is just over $100. Well-worth the investment - for me, at least - especially because I’m going to have it forever.

• It sounds silly, but sit in a variety of positions throughout your bouts of sitting. It really works.

  • Add a pillow underneath your bum.

  • Take the pillow away to change the sitting angle.

  • Shift your body left and right to alter which hip/side of the spine you’re sinking into.

  • Change the position of apps on your screen so that you’re looking in different places.

  • Swap which leg(s) are forward/backward/out to the sides.

  • Any change that alters forces will likely make your sitting more sustainable and comfortable.

Training

• Apply the same principles to hip flexor training that you do to every other muscle group:

  • Use positions, motions, and resistance directions that challenge the muscles of hip flexion directly.

  • Ensure your hip flexors are the rate-limiter of the exercise with a stable setup.

  • Progress in stress over time (load, reps, sets, etc.)

If you have not directly trained your hip flexors before, only a few sets per week can make a huge difference.

Here are three exercise tutorials you can utilize to train the hip flexors directly.

In these videos, you’ll see:

• How to set up and execute:

  • Lying leg curl single leg flexions.

  • Hanging leg raises.

  • Lying cable single leg flexions.

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