How to Do Integrated Hip Mobility Exercises

James Wilson: Hi this is James Wilson with MTB strength training systems and athletes training zone. Today I am going to show you how you can improve your mobility using a couple of strategies that you probably have not come across before. What we're going to do is show you how to use a form roller, using dynamic mobility moves, and then a couple of key static stretches. I am pretty much guaranteed that by the time you're going to do this, it take about five minutes to do it, you are going to have a lot more mobility in your hips. In fact right now, what I want you to do is, bend down and touch your toes. If you can touch your toes, great, if not, as once you self force, you can get. Just remember kind of where the tension is feeling, kind of where you start to feel resistance in your hamstrings, is it in your lower back, is it in your gluteus. Form a mental note of it because when you are done with this little routine here, I am going to have you touch your toes again. I pretty much guarantee that you're going to gain some ranching motion and you're going to feel a lot looser in those areas that felt tight. So anyways our first strategy is the use of the form roller, six inch piece of really dense form. You can get it from physical therapy supply store something like that. These are use to roll out in the muscle, these have to be addressed first before you can really start to gain good mobility in a muscle. Just doing static stretching is not going to do a whole lot to the underlined causes of the muscle tension that have been addressed. Anyways what I am going to show you is how to rollout your quads, your IT band and your gluteus, the three key areas that are generally caring a lot of tension and really you're going to feel the proper hip mobility and function. So what you're going to do is take the form roller right down the ground. You're simply going to lay down on the form roller and roll yourself back and fourth, your quads over the form roller working to find a squat that's particularly tight and uncomfortable, you want to work on that squat a little bit. Spend a more time on this, you know about 60 seconds or so is all your really need to do. If it's not very painful then just lay both legs on it then go ahead and put all your weight on one leg and really dig in deep on that one leg, then alternate legs. So once you've done a little bit on your quads, what you're going to do is roll over on the side and roll on the side of the leg. This is targeting the IT band, this is in area that want to gets tight. While the peripheral with knee function is the cause of knee pain, which will affect hip mobility. You can't really stretch effectively, so this is pretty much only strategy for addressing issues in this area. So roll it out. When you done that, then you're going to switch sides, roll it out on the other side. Now be honest with you for a while. First time you try this, this is going to be scrutiatingly painful. It just means that you really, really need it. So just kind of work your way into it, eventually you will get to the point where you can just put all your weight on it and roll on as per you want to be. So once you worked your IT bands first, that 30 seconds on each one, then you're going to get up in your gluteus and then we're just kind of roll over on your side a little bit and work it right there, digging into the whole butt cheek there. Again, while you're going to find that this is extremely uncomfortable, it just means that you need it. Again, work the other side. Get about 30 seconds on each one, that's all that you need. You can workout more but just kind of give it as a test drive and showed you the power how quickly this is going to have an affect. You seem to roll about 30 seconds on each side. So once you're done with that, what you're going to do is do a couple dynamic mobility moves. You're going to lay down on your back. First one is called a yoga twist. Lay down on your back, hands after the side, you cross your ankles, you're going to twist at the hips, trying to get the hip bone butt cheek up off the ground, twist them back and fourth, back and fourth. Do about 8-10 twists back and fourth. Then once you've done that, you're going to come back, cross your ankles the other way, roll it 8-10 times that way, back and fourth. Then you're going to do a side twist. What you're going to do is you're going to round your hand, put your head on your hand, get your weight down straight, bend the knees at 90 degree angles. You want to build the hip flexors, you don't you're your knees be creeping forward. Hand out in the front. Then what you're going to do is you're going to rotate over. The trick is you got to keep your chest up and keep your shoulders still, just rolling over, you are not diving the chest over, rolling over, get the knees over, keeping the chest still. It keeps work on a little more mobility in that lower back area which tend to be pretty tight. While you may find you are not actually able to get your knees all the way over until both of them touch the ground. That's alright, just work in the range of motion that you got and it will get better, I promise you. So again 8-10 on each side there. Last but not least, then I am going to have to a move for some cap flexibility. The caps get tight, giving them ankle mobility which just has a downward spinal on the whole kinetic chain the whole way up. So what you're going to do is get in this position here. Lot of you are quite familiar with this, this is a regular cap stress where we're going to pull a twist line. What you can do is you can do a cap right by pushing the hips up to the ceiling and then come down and then drive that heel under the ground. Pretend there is an arm under your heel that you're trying to squish, up, back down, up, squish that in. So again, you do 8-10 on that side, then switch sides. You want to make sure you're pushing the hips up. Coming back down, you're not rocking forward, so pushing the hips up, back down, squish in the end, back up, back down, drive that heel. Once you done that, I am going to show you a quick static stretching move. Now everything is freed up. You will get a lot more out of this static stretch than you would if you went straight into the static stretch. So flap your foot on a chair or a bench and then get your knee on the ground, chest up, suck your tummy a little bit, so you feel your pelvis rotate back, you will definitely fill your quads starting to stretch out. Keep in your chest up, head up so you can come back and touch your heel to your butt, but you got to make sure that you don't do this as you come back, don't fall at the hips. This is no good, you're just taking all stretch away. So keeping that tummy sucked in, keep that pelvis rotated back, chest up, come back, see if you can get your heel to your butt, just then you'll start to feel a good bit of tension there. You're going to hold this for a count of 15. Once you've done that, you're going to shift your foot forward and keeping the chest up and shift your weight forward. Now you're going to feel that stretch getting up into hip flexor area, hold this for a count of 15. Once you've done that, give a stress there, switch sides. Again, hips are square and this is not round and out. Hips are square, chest is up, everything square, keeping that tummy sucked in to keep the pelvis rotated back. Coming back, of course you can get to. Hold it for a count of 15 and shifting a foot forward, coming out, getting up in that hip flexor area. This is a great static stretch. We have back tightness, things like that. The sequence here will generally make a marked improvement on it within just one time doing. So five minutes, you're going to gain a lot more mobility, you are going to deep use your hands, stiffness in low back, so really nothing to loose. Then you're going to stand up, straight thing up. I want to want you do, just go back down, so if you can touch the floor. Now if you guys are doing this last time, just come in down your butt here comfortably. Now I am getting down with my hands on the ground, definitely feel a lot of difference in what are the tightness in those areas. So just go to show your power of taking more integrated approach towards mobility, not lying on one thing like static stretching, and try and address everything. There is a lot of different levels to it.