Hips

If you have pulled or strained a groin or inner thigh muscle, then you probably do appreciate your Adductor muscles. These are the muscles that run along the inner thigh. They don’t command much attention, until they decide to really act up. The tricky part about these muscles is figuring out where things went wrong. It’s easy to see how a basketball player, gymnast, or tennis player could aggravate this area since there is a lot of lateral movement in these sports. But how could this happen to a runner?

That’s the topic of today’s video. Not only what they do with running, but how we can better prepare them for running, as well as bring them back up to speed when they get cranky and misbehaving.

Please share this with a friend and fire any questions you may have about the exercises in my direction. Exercise #3 is especially helpful if this is an area of concern for you!

Hip flexion gets all the press with running form. But what about hip extension? In order to run well, we need to effectively bring our hips forward and allow them (one at a time of course!) to be extended. Proper running form requires some level of hip extension, thought it is more subtle when it’s not being done properly. Picture someone who takes too short of strides, or someone who runs with an excessively arched back, chances are that they are not extending properly.

But here’s the tricky part, we can work on hip flexion by actively flexing the hip, and this is how the hip flexes when we run. We can also work on extension by actively extending the hip, but this is NOT how hip extension takes place when we run. Rather, our hip extends via the body advancing overtop our planted foot. Because of this, the way we improve our extension with running is perhaps a little different than you might think. See if today’s video is helpful!

Let me know what you think and how these go for you!

Our hamstrings take the brunt of messes created by other parts of our bodies. Our hamstrings are considered ‘2-joint muscles’ which means that they cross both the hip and the knee. Because of this, our hamstrings have to be very adept at keeping the peace between our knees and hips. This is not an easy task! A common underlying issue with hamstring pulls and strains is lack of strength and flexibility of the hip rotators. With running, a misbehaving hip can be the main cause of a hamstring strain.

In today’s video, we cover the underlying causes, especially why it can take so long for a hamstring injury to go away. We also cover exercises that you can do to take care of hamstring issues on your own.

Please pass this along to a friend who may benefit. Run fast friends!