Bill Daniels demonstrates the Thomas test, a self-assessment for hip tightness. Lie on a table with one knee to your chest and watch where the other leg falls: if your lower back arches, your psoas is tight; if your thigh won't flatten, your rectus femoris is tight; if your knee won't bend to 90 degrees, your vastus medialis or lateralis is tight; if your leg falls outward, your TFL or glute medius is weak.
If you have tight or painful hips and you're not sure where to start, I have one simple test that can diagnose the problem for you. Hi, I'm Bill, owner of beyondfitnessonline.com, and if you like my content, please go ahead and subscribe below so you can get all of my updates every single Friday. Now today what I want to talk to you about is a real simple test called the Thomas test. Now, the Thomas test is a test where you will lay on your back on the edge of a table or a bed, and you will hold on to one leg, and you will be able to see based on what the other leg does what part of the anatomy is too tight or too weak so that you know where to start to begin to fix the problem. And this could potentially alleviate all hip problems you may be experiencing. It could end up giving you more mobility, more strength in things like lunges and squats. It could be a huge benefit to you. Now, in order to do this test, you will either need to record yourself or have somebody else who knows what they're looking for be able to look at it for you. So if you need to set up your phone with a recording of yourself while you do this, that's a real simple way to go ahead and do it. Now you can see in this video here what the Thomas test looks like, and I'm going to go into a little more in-depth with that. But before we get there, let's just talk about the anatomy of what we're looking at real quick. So you've got 5 different muscle areas we're looking at right now. The first one is the psoas, and it's important to understand that the psoas attaches to the front part of your spine, goes over the front of your hip, and attaches to the top of your leg bone. Your vastus medialis and your vastus lateralis work together. They're part of your quadricep, and they attach below your hip, but they also cross your knee joint through the patella tendon and attach to the top of your shin. The rectus femoris also attaches at the top of the shin through the patella, but also attaches above the hip. So it kind of works through both— with both the psoas and the vastus muscles. Off to the side, you'll see that you have what's called the tensor fasciae latae, or the TFL, which connects into a tendon called the IT band, and that goes right down the leg and attaches below the knee. And then underneath the tensor fasciae, you have the gluteus medius and the gluteus minimus, and their job is to stabilize the hip during any kind of leg movement. So now let's go back to the test, and what you'll see watching this test is that you're going to start off laying on your back. Your hips are really right at the very edge of your table or your bed, and you're holding on to both knees with your hands. You're going to go ahead and let go of one leg and put both hands on the other knee, holding that close to your chest, and let the falling leg just relax. Now make sure you don't just let it drop. I don't want you to get hurt, but it's going to relax. And what we're looking for are several things. You're going to see one of 4 things if there's an issue. One, if the lower back arches up when you put that leg down and/or your thigh does not come down to be parallel to the floor or better, then what you're seeing is probably tightness in your psoas. The second thing you might see is that if your back does stay flat, but again, your thigh does not go to parallel, and you may even see a little bit of knee extension, your knee does not drop to 90 degrees, then that is an indication that your rectus femoris is tight. The third thing you might see is that your leg goes down, And it is flat, you did not arch your back, but your knee is still not quite down to 90 degrees, then that's an indication that your vastus lateralis or your vastus medialis is tight. Could also be both of them. So they're not allowing the knee to flex because they're too tight. The 4th thing you'll want to look for is if your leg falls out to the outside, That could be an indication that your tensor fasciae latae is really tight. Could also be an indication that your gluteus medius and your gluteus minimus is really weak. And so you would need to do exercises for that. Now, I'm not gonna get into those exercises and what to do for those today in this video, but you would start with either foam rolling or stretching those muscles in particular, or strengthening that gluteus medius in particular. And after doing those things for a certain amount of time, you should start to see some differences. Now, if you have any other questions, please go ahead and comment below. I'll get into specific exercises for these in future posts. But if you have any other questions, go ahead and comment below. Until next time, live healthy.
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