Hip Flexor Stretches With a Foam Roller (Video)

Hip Flexor Stretches With a Foam Roller (Video)

Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Juliet Kaska and these are hip flexor stretches on the foam roller. The hip flexors are a group of muscles deep inside of the thigh that are responsible for flexing you at the waist line and also for bringing your femur bone up inside of the pelvis. When knees muscles are tight and bound up, they tend to limit your range of motion with daily activities such as running, walking up the stairs and sitting. I'm now going to show you some easy moves to do on the foam roller to stretch out your hip flexors. So, we're going to do two exercises on the foam roller, and these are going to be to open up our hip flexors. But the hip flexors are very deep muscles. So the first one we're going to do is actually going to be more of a quad roll, o.k. Because when we roll out our quad, it's actually going to help to release the muscles in our hip flexor. To roll yourself onto your roller, you want to stay strong in the upper body and your core. And then, pull yourself forward with your arms and your abdominals. Let the right leg remain resting, you don't want to tense up that leg. You want to keep the leg lifted, so it's relaxed. And roll back and forth gently, slowly moving. When you find a tender spot, so to sit on it, hover there, 10 seconds, 30 seconds, just give it enough time to begin to unwind. Our second exercise is a passive or static stretch for the hip flexors. Put the foam rollers underneath of your thighs and then, your hips up and sit your sacrum down on top of the roller. Walk your feet forward and then, walk your arms back until you're lying all the way down on the ground. Make sure your sacrum is right on top of the roller and then, pull your left knee in towards your chest. Not too deeply, just enough. And then, take the right leg and extend it out and let it fall down towards the ground. If you have a tight hip flexor which I do, you can put a little bend in the knee. You don't want to strain the hip flexor by keeping the leg rigid, just let it be soft. To transition to the other side, make sure you pull the right knee in, then reach the left leg out. And again, let the left leg hang, soften the knee if it needs to. Only go to the point where you feel a stretch, not enough to feel any pain. And to come out of it, pull both knees into your chest, roll the roller fro underneath of your back and plant your feet on the floor.

Original article and pictures take www.livestrong.com site