Friday, April 24th is ‘On Your Feet America’ day. This event is being promoted on the Get America Standing website – and references the James Brown song “Get Up Offa That Thing”, which made me smile.
This website says Americans average almost 10 hours a day sitting. Other sites and research studies claim something slightly more or less than that. Regardless of what the actual number is, I think most agree that A) we spend a lot of time sitting and B) this time may have increased with coronavirus restrictions in place. One of the many ill effects of spending so much of our time sitting is hip flexor tightness.
When you’re in a seated position, your hips are flexed. The muscles on the front of your hips are in a shortened position. These muscles may not feel particularly tight when you stand, but can be shortened enough to affect your posture and function. Among other things, tight hip flexors can contribute to low back pain, decreased athletic performance, and a loss of your sense of humor. (Okay, I just threw that last one in.)
The main hip flexor is the iliopsoas, a large muscle group that connects the lower spine and pelvis to the top of the femur. Hip flexion is also aided by part of the quadriceps muscle group , the rectus femoris, and another muscle called the sartorius. You don’t need to remember those names. Just know they get tight from sitting a lot.
Combating tightness can be accomplished in two ways – stretching the tight muscles and strengthening the opposing muscles. Here’s a short video demonstrating two useful and easy stretches for hip flexor tightness:
The other way to counteract hip tightness is through strengthening the opposing muscles – glutes and hamstrings. This causes a reflexive relaxation of the hip flexors – if you’re trying to extend the hip and push your leg back, the flexors have to relax to allow this.
Strengthening can be done through targeted exercises, like bridges.
Strengthening can also be accomplished by focusing on engaging those extensor muscles as you move. A good way to visualize this is to think about what you do when you’re going up stairs or hills. Most of us focus on moving the leg forward and up by using our hip flexors.
What we also need to do is concentrate on tightening the glutes and hamstrings to ‘push’ ourselves up the stairs or hill. I use sprints when running (either all-out or simply just picking the pace) to help with this. Consciously engage your butt muscles as you push forward off each foot and this will activate the muscles that extend the hip.
The official date for On Your Feet America is April 24. But you can start warming up for it today – do some stretches and then kick in your glutes while dancing to “Get Up Offa That Thing”. It’ll definitely be good for your hips and might even help with that sense of humor thing.
