Hip Flexor Strengthening in Yoga
If you’ve been doing yoga for a while, you have probably heard the expression “hip openers”. Maybe you have tight hips, or have a love/hate relationship with traditional hip opening poses, such as baddha konasana, pigeon pose etc. Once you’ve been in the yoga world for a while, you know that opening hips is a popular topic and often a goal in the yoga world. As a yoga teacher I teach them, as a yoga student I practise them.
However as with so much in the yoga world, our conversation on this topic has become more complex and nuanced. As our knowledge grows, not only of our anatomy but also how the human body works, we are realising that it is not as simple as ‘open your hips’.
To go to the beginning of it all: what are the hip flexors?The iliopsoas muscle is often referred to as one, but is really two different muscles; the iliacus and the psoas. Other muscles assist with flexing the hip, but the iliopsoas is the primary and major hip flexor.
The hip flexor muscles work on the front of the hip helping to bend it forwards. If the torso is held stable then the hip flexors can be used to lift the leg forwards. If the leg is stable then they can be used to tilt the pelvis forwards relative to the leg. Sitting for much of the day — something almost all of us are doing — contributes to tight hip flexors. Tight hip flexors can contribute to lower back pain, hip pain, and injury.
In yoga we have traditionally focused on hip flexibility, ie ‘opening our hips’. However, as we are slowly coming to realise, we need to balance flexibility with strength, mobility with stability. So even if your hip flexors feel tight, focusing on only stretching them isn’t the answer. In reality, most yogis’ hips are ‘open’ enough. In most cases, the hip flexor muscles need mobilizing and strengthening more than they need lengthening.
Personally I have been incorporating hip flexor strengthening in my practice, as a way of building more strength into my arm balancing posers, namely pincha mayurasana and handstand. I tend to rely on my lower back flexibility to take me into these poses, when I should be using my hip flexor strength (can also be called core strength, as hip flexor strength is a part of 'core’ strength). This results in an over arch of the lower back. What I have been doing to ‘train’ my body to rely more on my hip flexors to bring me into these poses, is to practice coming into them with a block pressed between my thigh and torso, as seen in the image below.
However, this move in the image below is one of my favourite hip flexor strengtheners, and an easy one to incorporate into your practice.
-have 1 knee on the floor, 1 leg stretched out in front. Hands on floor by front leg.
— focus on keeping front leg straight and trying to lift foot from floor.
-nothing may happen, except strong cramps in front leg hip flexor! This is normal. Not fun, but normal. 😝
-over time, it gets possible to lift foot from floor.
Throw it into your practice and see how you get on!