Many people do not realize that the cause of some of their pain and other health problems can actually be stiff hip flexors. The hips are the center of the body and the part that unites our upper body with lower body. Stiff hip flexors can both contribute to and be the root cause of the following problems:
- Back pain
- Stiffness
- Joint pain in the legs, neck or hips
- Walks with discomfort
- Hip that unlocks
- Bad posture
- Problems sleeping
- Lack of energy
- Depression and Anxiety
- Lack of explosiveness and speed
I would probably say that the vast majority of my customers and myself included have stiff hip flexors. Above all, this is a big problem for the people who sit for hours every day. Most of us sit way too much during the day and this sedentary lifestyle is absolutely crucial to creating stiff hip flexors. Ok, we are many who know that we are stiff in the hip flexors, and most of us have heard that it is good to stretch these muscles. But it will unfortunately not help, because the "problem" itself is a little deeper and is more complicated than that. Again, everything flows through the hips. The hip flexor actually consists of 3 muscles (Psoas major, Psoas minor and Iliacus) where a muscle connects the upper body with the lower body PSOAS and it is in this muscle that problems usually occur.
When a muscle is inhibited and in this case stiff, it does not have full function in the movement pattern, ie the muscle is weak. It is therefore very common for the psoas to feel stiff and it is very important to remember that just because the psoas feels stiff does not mean that it needs to be stretched… An important question to ask is WHY is the muscle stiff?
A common reason is, for example, that when a muscle is weak, it tries to protect itself by contracting, and then it becomes stiff.
If a muscle is inhibited, ie weak and stiff , it is actually inappropriate to stretch the muscle. A weak and inhibited muscle definitely does not like to be stretched! Stretching a hampered muscle will only create panic in the nervous system and the body will then react by contracting the weak muscle even more and it will feel even stiffer and tighter. Think for yourself how many times have you not stretched the hip flexor? And has it gotten any better?
Before you start stretching, it is important to know how your movement pattern both looks and works. But in most cases when it comes to psoas, it is most weak before stiff and usually because you sit too much, stress too much and breathe incorrectly or you are too strong in the muscles around (eg front thighs or abdominal muscles)
PSOAS major and minor
The multifunctional
Psoas muscle affects everything from movement in the form of eg walking to breathing at the same time as it stabilizes both back, hip and pelvic floor. Psoas not only creates movement but also tension and then gives rise to pain and anxiety as well as to pleasure and enjoyment.
"Escape / fencing" stress
Part of your stress system and the part we call the "escape / fencing" system can create psoas problems. When we get into a "escape / fencing" situation e.g. at work (due to a bad boss or something else) the muscle gets tense. An overly tense or too slack psoas muscle affects the whole body from digestive problems to poor posture and back problems.
Stores emotions
The psoas muscle is also important for the central nervous system, which makes the psoas muscle an emotional muscle that expresses deep emotions deep inside the body, which we in everyday speech call "gut feeling". It also stores emotions that do not really serve us as something positive such as fear. A relaxed, healthy and strong psoas muscle gives feelings such as well-being, comfort and security. How emotions are connected to the Psoas is easily explained by the fact that the Psoas sits together with the diaphragm, the muscle that helps us breathe.
Increase strength and mobility
To increase both strength and mobility, you need to know how to move so that you can train the right kind of exercises. But you do not just need to train this muscle but activate it so that it can relax and activated to help more effectively, so you really need both strength training, mobility training and stretching. There is not a single exercise that suits everyone, but this is completely individualized to solve your particular problems. But here are examples of a series of exercises that I do to get more mobile, stronger and activated hips.
Breath
Because Psoas attaches to the diaphragm, it is activated by deep breathing. How do you deepen then? By slowly filling the stomach with air. If you have difficulty with this, you can do this:
-The easiest thing is to lie down on your back with your feet against a wall. Place your hands along the ribs and breathe deeply slowly and feel that you fill up with air between the ribs.
Activation
To know that you are activating the right muscle, you can test this:
-Laying down on your back and placing your feet on a height such as a step board, stool or similar. Lift your hips up to the ceiling and tighten your stomach and buttocks, lift one leg slowly while maintaining tension and slowly lower.
Check with your hands along the ribs so that you breathe correctly, ie take a deep breath.
stretch
A good exercise where you really get to stretch is to stand on your knees with one leg forward so that you then stand on one foot and one knee. Stretch your arm, which you have above the leg where you are kneeling, as much as you can. Important to access the entire psoas is to really extend the arm upward so that you can access the entire muscle. Then extend the other arm diagonally backwards and lean it against a wall and also fold the arm above the head towards the wall.
Then bend the hip inwards and also outwards.
Exercise
To train the strength of the hip flexor, you need to train forwards, backwards, inwards but also upwards and downwards.
Here are 2 exercises that I train often and where I think I can access well in the right place.
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