Martial Arts Hip Flexor Stretches

Video Transcript

" We're going to finish off the stretching series, the floor stretching series, with a little bit more of an active floor stretch. The muscles are going to be engaged a little bit more. It's going to be a little bit more intense than some of the stretches. But, it's ok, because now we've really dug into the muscle fibers of all the different muscle groups. Jabar is going to come up a little bit higher on his knees, and he's going to bend his knee out in the front. Now, what he's doing is, he's getting a little bit of a stretch on the front hip, as well as he's really stretching out a lot of the rear hip flexor. Notice that he's kind of arching his back so he can kind of stretch into the back leg a little bit. He's sort of sitting in this position. There's a little bit of balance involved, so the muscle is slightly engaged, which is ok. We're getting back a little bit more into the natural way that the muscle would be working. And he's going to just come up and switch legs so he gets everything evenly. Just kind of flexing forward. Some people like to do a very slow sway back and forth in and out of the stretch, because they feel that that kind of relaxes their muscles a little bit more. The most important thing is that you don't do it as a bounce. Bouncing can tend to be bad. But a slight bit of motion in it is ok. It will make your muscles nice and loose, as long as you're not forcing anything. Obviously, you would sit in these stretches for a much longer period of time than what Jabar is doing. We're just kind of quickly illustrating each stretch for you. He's gone back to a similar position to what he had before, except for now you'll notice he brought his foot back up behind him. Some people find that their knee hurts on the ground a little bit, so you may need something soft to put your knee on when you do this stretch. But the more he flexes his knee forward; go ahead and stretch on the front leg a little bit more; it tightens up his hip flexor a little bit more and it tightens up the stretch a lot more across the top of the quad. And if he can get his heel closer to his glut, then that actually helps him out a little bit more too. Go ahead and switch. And he's going to come up and do this one as well. He's stretching into that front leg, pulling the foot back up closer to his glut and his hip. And, if he chooses so, then he can stretch in and out of the stretch a little bit more. Good. Go ahead and come out of that one. The next one, he's going to come up nice and high and he's going to stretch the front leg straight; completely straightening it, keeping this bent at a ninety degree angle. This particular position of the leg is going to make the hamstring a lot tighter. It's going to be a little bit harder to get into that stretch, but doing it all in this position really isolates it a lot more. He's grabbing the ball of his foot to bend it back a little bit, switching hands around a little bit. And he's coming up and switching. Down, stretching one hand in, stretching the other hand in. And from here you would just slide your foot forward into a split, and that would complete your floor stretching exercise."