Active Hip Flexor Stretch

The Active Hip Flexor Stretch is an effective exercise to improve mobility and flexibility in the hip muscles. This stretch involves actively engaging the hip flexors using a dynamic motion that moves the leg in various directions. help to strengthen and condition the hips, allowing for a more graceful and balanced movement. This stretch is especially beneficial for those who spend hours sitting, as it counteracts the effects of prolonged sitting.

Transcript

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This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, and we're talking about our progressions
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from our static stretching techniques, which is our active stretching
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techniques. Now, active stretching uses reciprocal inhibition that is going to
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contract our opposing muscles to increase our range of motion, strengthen our end
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range, and increase neuromuscular control via something called reciprocal inhibition.
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I'm going to have Vinnie come out and help me demonstrate our hip flexor stretch, which
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is the active stretch we're going to do in this video. Now, the position we adopt for an
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active hip flexor stretch or static hip flexor stretch is this same. We're using that
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nice, straight posture, he's going to draw-in. This leg is in 90 degrees at the hip,
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90 degrees to the knee. Now, the first step for this stretch is I'm going to go ahead and have him use
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a foam roll so he's not unstable. We want stability during the stretch. We
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might work on instability or unstable environments during our resistance
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training, but during stretches he's nice and stable. The first progression for this active stretch is,
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all I'm going to have him do is squeeze his glute, and posteriorly
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pelvic tilt. So, that's tuck his tailbone under, and do you feel that? -Yes. That's all it
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takes. We posteriorly pelvic tilt. We put the psoas on stretch by going through a little lumbar
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flexion, and forcing a little bit of hip extension.
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Now, if Vinnie has this mastered, he feels good with it, we can go ahead and
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progress this active stretch to include more and more psoas extensibility. The first
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step would be posterior tilt, and then reach up. He'll then bring his arm down,
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put it on his hip, good. The third progression would be tuck under, reach up, and now I'm
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going to have him go into little bit of lateral flexion, away from the side that he's stretching.
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You feel that a little more? Good. Let's go ahead and do our next progression. Our next progression is
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tuck under, squeeze your glute, reach up, side bend, and then we're going to
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rotate out. So remember our psoas attaches to the vertebral bodies of L1
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through L5.
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So, by doing lateral flexion and rotation away, we're pulling all of those
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psoas fibers as far as we possibly can away from the hip. Now which progression you
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decide to use is you can go as far as they can control, and go as far as they
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can still feel an increase in the stretch. So if they reach up and it feels
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like more stretch, great. If they reach up and then they do this, and there's no increase in
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the amount of stretch they feel, stick with just the reach up until they've
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mastered that, and then go ahead and progress. Now, the protocol for all active