The 7 Hip Flexors Stretches Runners Should Do

Running & Hip Flexors Tightness
I love running. I could go on and on about the fitness and health benefits the sport offers: It burns mad calories, improves endurance, prevents chronic diseases, the list goes on.

Yet the repetitive high impact of the sport has many shortcomings. One of these making the hip flexors tight.

Hip tightness is a common issue for many a runner—from beginners to elites. It’s one of the most common complaints I hear from my readers, clients, friends, and running partners.

Hip tightness is linked to a myriad of common conditions, such as knee pain, IT band syndrome, lower back pain, shin splints, etc.

In fact, if you’re currently dealing with or recovering from an overuse running injury, the fault may lie with your hips.

Let’s delve deeper…

What Are The Hip Flexors?
Located near the top of your thighs, the hip flexors consist of a group of muscles and tendons on the front—anterior—of your hip joint, connecting your legs to your pelvis.

When contracted, your hip flexors let you raise your knees or bend at the hip.

The primary hip flexor muscles are the psoas major and the iliacus— collectively known as the iliopsoas, (usually the weakest of all of the muscles).

Other hip flexor muscles include the sartorius, tensor fascia latae, and rectus femoris. See image.

And here’s how they look like :

The main hip flexors muscles
Source – Wikipedia

The Functions Of the Hip Flexors
The hip flexor muscles are used in every stride when walking, running, and sprinting.

These allow you to walk, run, bend kick, and swivel your hips.

Your hip flexors are contracted on every step forward. The more miles you log in, the more you put them to work.

Some of the main functions:

Bringing the thighs up toward the chest.
Driving the knees up and down.
Maintaining proper running form.
Moving the legs from side to side and front to back.
Stabilizing the pelvis.
Causes of Hip Issues
The hips is just one region of the body that’s prone to tightness if you’re a runner.

Running’s repetitive nature means that you’re constantly working the hip flexors and extensors through a very small range of motion.

Add to this the fact that, thanks to our sedentary lifestyle, we spend the bulk of our time sitting—roughly a third of the day.

When you spend a lot of time in a seated position, your hip flexors are kept in a shortened position more than they should be, which, in turn, makes them super tight.

This has huge negative effects on your posture, spinal stability, and gait.

Ramifications of Tightness

Tightness in the hip flexors results in an exaggerated anterior pelvic tilt. This occurs when the arch of the lower back increases while the backside stick out more.

The tighter your hip flexors get, the more your pelvis tilts back and the more likely you’re to lean forward—as in stick out your butt and arch your back—while running.

Not only this is bad form, but can also set you up for back pain and serious injury. And you want none of that.

For more on the research conducted on hip muscle tightness and overuse injury, check the following studies:

Study 1

Study 2

Study 3

Study 4

Study 5

How To Test Your Hip Flexor Flexibility
Wondering if your hips are too tight—or loose enough? Take the Thomas test.

Also known as Iliacus test or Iliopsoas Test, this test is used to measure the flexibility of the hip flexors—more specifically, that of the iliopsoas muscle group, the pectineus, Rectus Femoris, gracillus as well as the Sartorius and Tensor Fascia.

Proper form

Start by laying or sitting at the very edge of a table or bent, with the tailbone resting at the edge.

Then, roll back onto the table while pulling both knees to your chest. This helps ensure that your lumbar spine is flat on the table and your pelvis is posteriorly rotated.

Next, hold the opposite hip in maximum flexor with the arms, while the assessed limb hang down toward the floor. Last up, perform on both sides and compare.

Results

If your left leg lower backs, and sacrum remain flat on the table with the knee bending to 70 to 90 degrees, kudos…you don’t have tight hip flexors.

However, if one of your thighs or legs stay up drastically higher than the other, then you do have tight hips, and regular hip openning stretches are required.

How To Stretch Your Hip Flexors
Fortunately, there’s is an abundance of good hip openining stretches that you can perform at home to decrease tightness, relieve pain, and increase mobility in your hips.

You won’t need to join a gym, buy a lot of expensive equipment or even leave the comfort of your home to perform the following hip flexors exercices.

Enjoy!