Tight Hip, Twisted Core
Tight Hip, Twisted Core
I recently became aware of the importance of our hip flexors and how they affect the surrounding areas of the hip, lower back and even our hamstrings. Let’s understand how tight hip flexors can cause your hamstrings to feel tight
The iliacus is a hip flexor muscle that lines the inside surface of your pelvic bone (or ilium) and also connects to the hip joint. When this muscle becomes tight, the ilium rotates forward into an anterior tilt position and changes the alignment of the hip joint.
When the pelvis is in a neutral position, there is an appropriate balance of strength & length of the muscles on both the front side (Quads) and back side of the pelvis (glutes and hamstrings). When imbalances begin to develop over time, this is typically when pain or tightness is felt in the body.
Tight hip flexors pull the pelvis forward into an anterior pelvic tilt. The hamstrings, which attach to the bottom of the pelvis, become stretched out beyond their normal length. To prevent the pelvis from tilting anteriorly even more, the hamstrings respond by holding tension in this lengthened position.
It’s like a game of tug-of-war!
While this tension creates the feeling of the hamstrings being tight, you will likely find that stretching them only provides short-term relief. They’ll probably just tighten right back up later that day because of the imbalance that already exists. For longer-term improvement, you may consider releasing your tighter hip flexor muscles and strengthening your hamstrings (and glutes) to create better balance around the pelvis.
To reduce the pain or tension surrounding that hip joint, you must improve the alignment of your pelvis to create more space in the hip joint for everything to move more smoothly. One way of doing this is by releasing the tension held in your iliacus muscle, which helps the ilium rotate back into its neutral position. Some ways to do this are through the following three stretches that you can perform for 30-45 seconds at a time, for 1-3 sets.
Another great way to help loosen up the joint is with foam rolling with a ball, like the picture below. By bringing the ankle to the opposite knee, and pushing the same knee away from us, we get a great position for the ball beneath our glute to go to work.
