Ski instructor Tom Gellie shows a daily hip-flexor stretch for skiers. Skiing and sitting keep hips flexed and tight, limiting range of motion. Step one foot back, keep your torso upright, and push your femur backward to open the hip angle past 90 degrees, adjusting foot angle to hit different hip-flexor vectors.
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Hey guys, this is Tom Gellie, ski instructor and body alignment coach, here with just one tip for skiers today to help with their hip health and function. So my one tip is to basically work on stretching or mobilizing the front of your hip joint. Okay, so what I'm meaning by this is, from side on, this area at the front of your hips right here on my little mini pelvis, and basically getting it to go from a closed position, which we're all the time in skiing, into an open position. So we're trying to change the angle between this bone and this bone here, okay, opening it up. So why am I talking about this? Okay, so in skiing, a lot of the time we spend in a flexed or closed front of the hip position. This is what we need to be athletic and ski balanced on, on the slopes. So, all great for being out there, but once we come off, we often then go to the restaurant or at home seated in even more of a flexed position. So, our joints love to go from one range to another and often don't like being stuck in one, one position. So, we're going to work on opening the front of the hip joints simply by doing this. Standing, you're just going to take whichever hip you want to work on first, unilaterally. So, I'm going to step my right foot back, keeping my body more over the front foot. This should automatically, if I keep strong through my torso and abdominals, keep my pelvis level. This is now going to open the front of the hip by taking my femur bone back. Okay, so let's change this angle from being 90 to greater than 90 degrees. Okay, I'm going to place the balls of my feet on the ground, not my heel, because having my ankle bent— if I put my leg back here, ankle open, ankle bent— tends to want to close the front of my hip. A flexed ankle goes with a flexed hip. Tip. So I'm going to open my ankle and place the balls of the foot down to anchor. Come forward, straight away you should feel a stretch on the front of the hip. Okay, you can now work on taking that pelvis further forward, which should just increase the opening angle at the front of the hip, which increases the load or the amount of stretching that goes through the front here. So, take your time warming up into it. Work on both sides. Again, dynamically kind of moving forward and out of that position. And then, we can take that exercise and hit more than just front on, but a few different vectors, because there are lots of different hip flexing muscles on the front here. That don't just work in this straight up and down plane. We want it to be happy opening in all these different directions. So I'm going to take the same exercise, but I'm going to step at a slightly different angle. So here, I'm going to be feeling, or I should be feeling, a little bit more of a stretch on the inside front of the hip. Straight down the middle. Over here, a little more to the outside of the hip. Straight down the middle, more to the inside, more to the outside. One thing I'd really like you to be aware of is just basically where these two bony parts of your pelvis are and where your thigh bones go. Because realistically, we're trying to change the, the position and the angle of the, the joint at the front here.. So those two points need to be changing their position relative to each other, and that'll, that'll basically end up with you feeling the stretch. If they do not change relative to each other, then you'll feel the stretch elsewhere, or wherever you're bending and moving the joint from. So be aware of this point, and perhaps your knee. If you feel those two points changing, then you're going to get the right effect of stretch. So that's my one tip for skiers out there, is to open the front of both your hips each and every day. Why? Because a lot of the time we're spent flexed in our ski stance and then flexed on the couch or in a seat. So it's going to help balance out that, that amount of movement, and then it'll also allow these strong posterior muscles here to actively engage and just some openness at the front. You should feel, if you maintain this, that your hips feel a lot freer and a lot looser quite soon. So thanks very much for watching. My name is again Tom Gellie.
