Feature Article

Your Hips

Coach K

Hey y’all

Today we are going to talk about YOUR HIPS. While many people ride to save their knees, it has the potential to do bad things for your hips. The issue is that standard cycling posture will put your hips into extreme flexion- lots worse than sitting at a desk. Then you add some muscle building activity in that posture and you slowly create a muscle memory for that position as well as making those pesky hip flexors tighter and stronger.

Pay attention to how many cyclists get off their bike and walk as if they are going into a strong headwind. AND if you ask them about it, they will say that they are standing up straight. This is what the muscle memory and hip flexor tightness will do. The long term problems of this are:
1.    Low back pain
2.    Increased wear/tear on hip joint due to change in position of femur (leg bone)
3.    Decreased balance due to the mild forward lean
4.    Increased effort with any walking due to biomechanics.

HOWEVER you can prevent this from happening!

The simplest thing is to stretch the tight hip flexor (see photo) using what I call the ½ kneel position. Key points are to make sure and line up your shoulder, hip socket and knee in a vertical line. Then do a pelvic tilt. This will produce a stretch sensation on the front of downward leg. Hold this for 30-45 sec and then do on the other side. You may have 1 side that is tighter than the other side.

The longer term solution is to add an exercise or two for the hip extensor muscle group. This way you use one muscle group to “stretch the other group” and it helps keep everything in better balance. For that you may want to call me or another certified trainer to get the correct exercise and more importantly, make sure that you are doing it correctly.