By: Andy Ness, Senior Personal Trainer, NASM Certified Personal Trainer, CES, PES
Functional hip mobility can be best summarized by how high you can actively raise your leg while lying on the ground (and keeping the other flat on the ground). If you can’t do this to ~90 degrees, you have an increased risk for hip dysfunction and low back pain.
A full functional mobility program addresses several parts: joint capsule health, sliding surface mechanics, muscle dynamics (stretching), and motor control. For those with tight hips (i.e. if you can’t lie on your back and point one leg vertical with straight knees), it can be tough to know what to do when regular stretching doesn’t seem to do enough! It will usually work for a while, but it only addresses one piece of the puzzle (muscle dynamics). All three should be addressed for real world mobility that will actually improve your function and reduce risk for pain and injury.
We should briefly address the joint capsule health and sliding surface mechanics using a few mobility tools; what we have is a green Rogue Monster Band. (http://www.roguefitness.com/roguemonsterbands), but, of course, any similar band will work. We also just need some sort of compression type band, or knee wrap (featured here are VooDoo Floss Bands) http://www.roguefitness.com/voodooflossbands
Just wrap fairly tight on the upper thigh, step into the band, walk forward until you feel significant tension. From here, hinge at the waist for two minutes; you should feel quite a stretch in the back of the thigh that is wrapped. This should feel amazing if you have some tight hamstrings! After that, all we have to do is get the nervous system proficient in actually using the new range of motion that has been gained by the body. Enter The Cook Hip Lift! The Cook Hip Lift is an exercise developed by functional movement expert and Physical Therapist, Gray Cook.
Try to carve out time to perform both exercises every day if you have tight hips!