3 Hip Flexor Strengthening Drills
It hurts.
It doesn’t feel good.
My body just can’t handle running.
I don’t do it because I’m so bad at it.
I’m sure you’ve heard that from family and friends and random acquaintances on the internet.
To be honest, they’re probably right.
It doesn’t feel good because their body lacks the structural balance needed to get into good positions while running. Running in bad positions repetitively - ouch.
To combat this, we recently did a simple movement test with our running athletes - the hurdle step over.
This simple yet effective test shows us a bunch of things. Why? Because what happens at this end range exaggerates and shows us what is happening on a micro scale with each and every step while running.
The biggest default we saw was a lack of hip flexion - not being able to lift the knee above the hip crease.
When athletes lack hip flexor strength, they start to swing their legs around to make up for that lack of strength.
Have you ever seen someone who is running and it looks like their legs swing out to the side versus straight up and down?
This can be from a lack of hip flexion and more importantly a lack of hip flexor strength. So yeah, if that’s you, running probably doesn't feel very good...
When people don’t lift their legs much higher than a stair all day, it’s not very surprising that hip flexor strength is a big weakness.
Not only that, but weak hip flexors often create tight hip flexors.
With stay at home orders, many of us are hitting the pavement or trails and running a lot more. Here are 3 easy hip flexor drills you can start doing right now to gain structural balance back and make running less painful.
Drill #1 - bent straight leg raises
This is our easiest progression. If you feel a lot of hip clicking on drill #2 then stick with this one.
Pull your knee to your chest with a bent knee, then straighten it out to add some weight to your leg, and control the down portion with a 3 second count.
This is square one. You’ll notice our feet are on a foam roller (you can use any raised surface like a water bottle). This keeps your lower spine flat if you don’t have the core strength/control to do so with your feet flat on the ground.
Drill #2 - Straight leg raises
This is very close to #1 but raising the leg with the knee straight will add extra weight on the up portion.
Adding this for 1 set of 10 during your running warm ups can go a long way towards strengthening them if you do it every time.
Drill #3 - flexor pulls
This one requires a small jump stretch band but adds some resistance to your hip flexor strengthening.
These are pretty cheap and easy to find on amazon. Click here to buy! For this exercise, we use the ORANGE, which is the lightest resistance.
Before you go crush that 7% grade hill with hip flexors that struggle getting much higher than a stair, try these three drills! Your muscles are learning how to do the job they were meant to do and you’ll have more structural balance. Time to lace up!
Garry Dubbs is the Co-Creator of ATH Fitness
His main objective in life is to increase people's physical capabilities to allow them to try and explore more things that are fun. If you can only walk, you’re not going to try many new things. But if you can be totally confident in your body’s capabilities, then you will make the world your playground. That’s why for a limited time, ATH is offering the Rugged Body Blueprint for FREE! It is a quick total mobility guide that is designed to make your body ready for anything! Just put your email in below and we will get you started on becoming an All Terrain Human, TODAY!