A hip mobility routine using the Seiza bow stretch to improve flexibility and control. Start with hips between your heels, slide backward to load the joint, do 5-10 reps with pulses. Advanced: lift one leg off the ground to increase difficulty and reduce tension with each rep.
Chapters
We're just going to start sliding backwards, loading our hip right here. Okay? So as we kind of slide back deep into this, you'll start feeling a stretch. Right now we're going to go through our bow hip stretch. What we're trying to do is we're trying to work on both quad flexibility, tension in the knees, and hip mobility as well. Getting in this starting position is kind of where we want to assess how we're feeling, where we're feeling tension where, how deep into this stretch we can get. From there, we're going to start working some of these side to side and do one side at a time and kind of work and see, okay, can we get a little bit deeper into the stretch? Can we make this a little bit more comfortable? So this resting position, again, this is our Seiza resting position. So you're seeing my hips drop between my heels. Okay. My toes are started pointed together, and I'm just trying to sit into this position. Now, a lot of people might have some tension in through the quads, in through the top of the knee, or even into the kneecap, and that's okay. If we need to start a little bit farther forward in this, that's fine. The goal is, as we loosen things up, it's going to get more comfortable being in this position, and we'll probably work on getting deeper into this position as well. Okay. So again, this is our starting position. So we're going to come forward, okay, here. We're going to go front hand here, other hand here, and we're going to start nice and high with our knee behind our calf. And we're just going to start sliding backwards, loading our hip right here, okay? So as we kind of slide back deep into this, you'll start feeling a stretch. And what we can do is we can kind of sit into that, working on keeping our body nice and straight in a column here. And when I say in a column, I mean from head to my tailbone, nice and straight, and keeping my hips and shoulders nice and square. As we move, we can move a little bit deeper if we're comfortable with that, if the knee is comfortable, if the hip's comfortable, and we can start working a little bit side to side. With our body there. So as we kind of work, typically I recommend 5 to 10 repetitions. Loosen up, work a little bit deeper into that. Sit into it, work it in and out, kind of pulse, try and get a little bit deeper, and just feel that hip starting to loosen up and feel that start to move a little bit more. Okay. So what you see is I've gotten deeper into this position, okay, we're loading this tissue, and what I can start doing is I can start lifting that back leg off the ground. And again, this back leg, from my head to my heel, I'm in a nice straight line here. And so we're going to start loading this even more because there's fewer points of contact with the ground, okay. As I come forward up out of this, I can see Start working this, and we're trying to use our hip as our primary mover to work in and out of this stretch. And so we're starting to come up. I can start taking more pressure off of the back leg as well. So we're just keeping that in the air, and we're just really controlling from the hip and from the quad this movement in and out. And we see it just starts getting a little bit easier to move around, and we're loosening up this tissue in the hip as we load this. And so what we're trying to do is get a little bit more hip control in here. From here, we'll come back to neutral, and we'll sit into this. And what you'll typically notice is the side we just worked, we're able to sit into this a little bit easier, feels a little bit smoother coming back compared to that first rep. And then we can kind of work into the other side. Start high, work into it. For me, this side feels a little bit easier. I can move just a little bit faster straight into this kind of deep position. This moving, shifting side to side is less tense. And so we're just going to work pretty quickly back into that because that feels comfortable. And I've got pretty decent control up and down here. So kind of work that a little bit. If you feel a little bit of tension in one spot, we can kind of keep working that spot till it kind of loosens up and we feel a little bit looser. Nice. Start taking a little bit of pressure off, and we've got a little bit more control here. All this, again, control is coming from knee, hip, ankle. Okay, good, good. Come back into that neutral position there, and we see that starts feeling even more comfortable and even more loose. Okay, so again, that's our bow hip stretch. Okay. And that's just focusing on Kind of loading the hips and getting deeper into this nice resting kneeling position here. So from here, our next movement is going to be our corner hip stretch. We'll cover that next.
