Hip Flexors

Can Your Hip Flexor Flex its Muscle?

Take a trip to Thailand or Southeast Asia, and you will notice that tight hips amongst the local population are as rare as hen’s teeth. Now, why would that be? Natural movement patterns are still daily in use over there. Most of their land agriculture is still worked with hand tools and no fancy machinery. Squatting down happens every day as most people still use squat toilets and there are no chairs in their temples.

Most of us rarely flex our knees past 90-degrees, and a squat is foreign to us here in the West. How often do we drop down into a full squat to harvest potatoes, wash our laundry, or use a bathroom? Never a guess, and this is where our problem with tight hips begin.

Our modern-day movements consist of rolling out of bed, sitting down on a knee-high toilet, eat your breakfast seated on a chair or stool. You sit down again in your car seat, on your office chair and remain there most of your working hours. The muscles and tissues that make up your flexion, extensions, adduction and abduction, internal and external rotations stay dormant all day and night long, hence the saying, if you don’t use it, you lose it!

Tight hips are more than just a simple inconvenience. You cannot sit comfortably on the floor, in a car or for long haul flights on a plane. **If your hips are tight, you automatically adjust your movements to compensate**. For example, your feet turn out, and your heels come up when you squat. When you sit cross-legged on the floor, your back hunches up into a ball, and you feel like you are falling back all the time. Running is impaired because your hips don’t fully extend, so your gait turns into a clumsy waddle once you start to fatigue. Unfortunately, all these movements can bring on chronic back, knee and hip pain, poor posture and make you more prone to injuries.

Pilates exercises will help you improve your posture, reduce back or knee pain, prevent injuries, improve balance, speed and power, and much better quality of LIFE!! It’s time to flex your hip flexors!!

Pilates4.Me – Let the change to flexible hips begin!