STOP Hip Flexor Stretches Unless You Do This!
– Bob, viewers, greetings, greetings. Today we,
– Hello. – Oh, Bob says hello, wait, there. We're talking about hip flexors today. We know if our hips are tight
it can cause hip problems and back problems as well. – Ass high, ass high. – Ass high as well. So you need to stretch 'em. But there's one thing you must do or it's not worth stretching them at all. We're gonna show you that
one thing in just a minute. – Be ware.
– Sam's gonna help. – Good. ♪ Bob and Brad ♪ ♪ The two most famous ♪ ♪ physical therapists ♪ ♪ on the internet ♪ – The hip flexors.
And then we do have 'em here. Very clearly shown with Sam. We've got some nice color tape
– Right. – Showing the location. Now, and I must say
with our his, our tapes historically, we always focus as well as almost
everyone else on YouTube. – Iliopsoas. – Right, which is the deep muscle here. And it's definitely a primary hip flexor. – Right. – But that particular muscle's not alone. It has two other muscles
that are very helpful. One is the rectus femoris, which connects to that ASI. ASI is the bone right there. It goes all the way down and
is part of the quadriceps. – Right.
– To the patella. – To the floor.
– Okay? Now the other one is, I like this muscle. The Sartorius.
– You would. – Yeah, it connects from the same point on the hip and it actually
goes down and crosses over to the inside or
medial aspect of the tibia.
And what happens, did you know? This is a little ah, (chuckling) trivia.
– Trivia. – This is the longest muscle in the body. – It is.
– Yep. Now let's take a look
at the mechanics of this 'cause this is critical to understand. If you look at the hip flexor, the iliopsoas muscle, they have a very short lever arm. If we look here, come on Sam. And this hip flexes, it's
pulling at this angle, a very short lever arm from here to here. Now, if you look at the
sartorius or the rectus femoris from this point, 'cause they
do connect to the same point in a similar point at a bottom, there is much longer, a
much larger lever arm.
So they have some advantages mechanically. So if we just stretch this muscle and we skip these two
muscles, it's a problem. – You gotta get all three. – Right
– All four. – And it's actually easy
to do while you stretch but I think most people miss it. – Right. – Including, I've missed it myself. – I have too.
– You know. And we've got this information from Rick. – Rick Olderman. – Rick Olderman, a therapist who's really paving the way for- – He's our man.
– Yeah, he's our man. – He can do it. – He's done a lot of work to understand this.
– Right. We'll get on with it in just a second. (fast swooshing) Okay, one of the easiest ways
to stretch the hip flexors in our opinion, at least my opinion.
– Right, I agree. – Is lie on a bed or a
massage table like this. – Right. – Get to the edge. Now Bob is gonna slide his hips over until his left leg
can swing over like this. Right now with his knee in this position, he's starting to stretch the ilio- – I could feel it. – Yep, that deep muscle, okay. Now, if he grabs this knee and pulls it up you could even feel it more, can't you? – I can see you, my leg
pulls up a little bit.
– Yep, right here when this goes up. Now if I push down here, you feel it more – Right. – So we can stretch the iliopsoas, but the other two muscles, in order
to get those to stretch we have to get the heel this direction. – Aye, yeah, yeah. – And you start to feel that, don't you? – Yeah, so now we're
getting that rectus femoris and the sartorius, those too long muscles with more leverage and
we're gonna stretch 'em.
Now if you wanna do this by yourself and you don't
have someone to help which most people prefer. – Right.
– Take a belt like this. Put it around the ankle and simply. – Aha.
– Ah, look at this. Making Bob smile. So you're just gonna go pressure on, pressure off, 10 repetitions
or hold it 15 to 30 seconds. And that'll also give you a nice stretch. Make sure you do both legs and, so you don't walk in circles.
Okay, we've got more to talk about. (fast swooshing) Okay, the second option
you can do lying down on a bed, and actually this one gets after the sartorius a
little more aggressively as well as the rectus femoris. So you can use a belt
to help pull like we did on the other one. This belt is a little
short, it's not Bob's belt. I think if we had a longer belt at work. We're gonna use a stretch
strap that actually has some advantages anyways. – Got the hoops?
– Yep. So on your stomach, go ahead, Bob. Can you lift up like that? Now we're gonna get some stretch there in those two muscles, but
we need something like this.
And let it go over the shoulder
and Bob's just gonna pull. Do you feel that Bob? – Yeah, I sure do. – Ooh, now if there is
somebody else around, you can do it yourself. But if we, Bob, can you
let off on the pressure? And I'm gonna just lift up and put a cushion underneath his knee, and that's gonna even make
it a little more aggressive. Use a pillow, a towel roll, whatever. How you doing, Bob? – Real well. – Now to get this even,
even more so we get that sartorius, we wanna go
with some internal rotation of the femur. And what we're going to do
is, Bob's gonna take this. There we go, and let that heel go to the side like this. – Ooh. – And you're gonna get
more aggressive on that sartorius, that long muscle
in the body, and stretch. How you doing, Bob? – I'm doing well. (laughing) – Okay, you can use either one whichever way works best for
you, but one way or another, get those two long muscles stretched out.
All right, Bob, that's enough. It's enough, Bob.
– Okay. – We're done.
– Good. (fast swooshing) – All right, thanks for tuning in. I'm sure your hips are
gonna feel much better to get those long muscles even longer. And Bob, once again, we can fix just about anything except for. – A broken heart. – And we're gonna continue to work on it, even though we're not making any progress. – We're gonna persevere. – Yeah, it's been 12 years
and we've been working on it with no progress. But we don't stop. (Bob laughing) We will never stop. (bouncy music).
