The most popular objections to exercise are usually along the lines of: "I don't have enough time", "I don't have a gym membership", or "I'm afraid I might hurt myself lifting heavy weights". Today I am going to walk you through three different exercises that are absolute bangers for opening up the hips, building strength in the lower extremity, and improving your mobility. If you're one of those people making excuses like this instead of exercises my hope is that you can incorporate 1-3 of these exercises into your weekly routine and feel stronger with less pain! You don't need weights to give your body a good stimulus to create an adaptation. As long as you have space you should be able to preform these exercises at home or work with ease.
Horse stance
Horse stance can be preformed by shuffling your feet 3-5 times outwards and pushing your hips down and slightly back. I recommend that you keep a shorter stance of about 3 shuffles and a pronounced arch in your lower back(think pouring water out the front of your pelvis). Drop your hips to be just inline with your knees and hold for time. I'd really like for each hold to be at least 30 seconds, but if that doesn't seem manageable hold for bursts of time and do short "reps" of those bursts until you reach a total of 30 seconds or more time spent in horse stance. If this is too easy you can try and set your hips a bit lower or you can shuffle your feet out a bit more. I once heard that a 5 minute horse stance meant that you had mastered the stance, and subsequently had hips of steel. Horse stance primarily targets the adductor group. These are the muscles that many of my clients will express extreme feelings of tension when massaged. Just about everyone could use some extra strength and mobility in this area. Repeat 1-5 times a few days a week.
Wall Sits
Do I really need to explain these? Find a wall that is safe to press your bodyweight against. Simply slide down until the top of your hip crease is parallel with your knee. Hold for time. At least 30 seconds. This is pretty substantially easier than horse stance and I would really like to see a minute+ of time under tension. The wall sit targets the quads, glutes, hip flexors, and even the core but primarily the quads. This is a great exercise if you struggle with knee pain or the squat pattern. Repeat 2-6 times a few times a week.
Prone Hip Thrust/Hamstring Bridge
This is one exercise that could be vastly improved upon with a foam roller. To preform a hip thrust lie down flat press the top of your head against the floor while thrusting your hips forward until you cannot anymore. You should feel a deep contraction in your glutes and hamstrings. You can preform these in short bursts of max effort say for 3-5 seconds for 10-20 reps or hold for time. I prefer holding for time when modifying the movement to be more of a hamstring bridge. To preform a hamstring bridge press your heel into an elevated surface(like a bench or chair) while lifting the opposite leg/knee towards your chest. The extended hip leg should be only slightly bent and you should feel a lot of tension into your hamstring and glutes. You can hold for burst "reps" say 3-5 seconds for 6-10 reps or for a 30 second hold. The hamstring bridge gets even better when a foam roller is used instead and you have to press the foam roller into the ground with your feet and toes without it rolling away. You can do the same foam roller modification to a hip thrust.
Conclusion
Well there you have it. 3 exercises that can totally kick your pain's ass. Because these exercises are preformed in an isometric manner(holding a contraction for time) they may have a unique ability to target compromised tendon and allow for healing of the soft tissues that is less vascular. A true isometric targeting tendon would technically be a very high effort bout of 3-5 seconds to my understanding, but 30-60+ second isometrics can still help to improve the health of the tendon indirectly by forcing the muscles to take over some of the work the tendons would normally do allowing for better tendon function. I am probably misquoting something Jake Tuura said here but if you care you'll go read his stuff or listen to some of his podcasts. Seriously thought these exercises are really good and you probably don't have a good excuse to not do them so get to it!
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