Relax Your Hip Flexors To Make Your Hip Feel Better With Squats
Your hip pain should not stop you from doing activities you enjoy!
The video above addresses one specific potential cause for hip pain during deep squats: tight hip flexors.
Why Do I Have Hip Pain With Squats?
If your hip flexors are tight or overly developed, they can create pain in the front of the hip when squatting.
Tight hip flexors can occur as a result of:
- sitting too much
- limited ab and hamstring strength
- exercise that targets hip flexor strength
- limited hip internal rotation range of motion
Extra muscle bulk in the hip flexors can occur as a result of:
- too many sit-ups when attempting to strengthen abs
- hip impingement from a labrum tear or bony abnormality (Femoral Acetabular Impingement)
- cross country and backcountry skinning (climbing the mountain on skis)
What Can I Do To Fix My Hip Pain With Squats?
Trigger point release is a great option to calm the aggravated soft tissue.
We recommend releasing the iliacus, which makes up the outside half of the hip flexor muscles (iliacus and psoas). Press and hold on the muscle where it is most exposed on the inside of the ilium.
Perform the release while doing squats of increasing depth. After 5-10 squats, do another set without the release. Your hip should feel much better if the culprit of your pain was your iliacus!
*Although you can find information on performing a psoas release, it is not recommended. There is too much "stuff" in the way to successfully and specifically release that part of the hip flexors. You are better off sticking with the iliacus release only.
Remember, This Is Only The Start For Most Injury Recoveries...
The body is complicated and this is one small, but important piece to your injury recovery.
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