| You've seen it just like this image high level sports people stretching the sh%* out of what they think are tight muscles and often they may be but a lot of the time in my experience they also are not. Allow me to explain; when a muscle is weak on one side of a joint the muscle on the other side is not fully inhibited because the original muscle cannot activate fully enough to cause full inhibition. Therefore, the muscle on the opposite side will be mildly active hence the feeling of tightness. So next time you have a client with tight muscles you may want to investigate what is happening, on the opposite side of that joint let’s play with an example. The classic one you hear all the time on the Internet is tight hip flexors people wanting to stretch the sh%* out of what they |  |
perceive to be tight hip flexors how about weak glutes being the cause as opposed to tight hip flexors.
It's fair to say society has become more sedentary. Sedentary means sitting on your arse sitting on your arse (a lot) means weak glutes so it's fair to assume that most people glutes unless they're athletes will be under active and unable to fully activate and create full hip extension range of movement. If this assumption is true, then it's likely the hip flexor on the other side of the joint will be slightly activated uninhibited and appear/behave tight.
Now you might want to run a test like the Thomas test to be sure of this as it's a useful indicator of where hip flexors are at and once you've done that you can safely say that a hip flexor is not creating a full range of movement. Give that a go and see how things look to you.
Then see how much hip extension your client can create in a prone position; knee bent to 90 degrees and ask them to drive their heel up to the ceiling. Measure the distance the knees gets off the ground and compare to the other side. If it’s less that a fist there is plenty of room for improvement, make sure that that keep their ASIS on the ground otherwise that’s where they’ll cheat.
So, before you go stretching the sh%& out of someone's hip flexors take a look at what's going on at their glutes first assess reassess and then decide what course of action is next if you need help with that hit me up and I'll be happy to assist.
It's fair to say society has become more sedentary. Sedentary means sitting on your arse sitting on your arse (a lot) means weak glutes so it's fair to assume that most people glutes unless they're athletes will be under active and unable to fully activate and create full hip extension range of movement. If this assumption is true, then it's likely the hip flexor on the other side of the joint will be slightly activated uninhibited and appear/behave tight.
Now you might want to run a test like the Thomas test to be sure of this as it's a useful indicator of where hip flexors are at and once you've done that you can safely say that a hip flexor is not creating a full range of movement. Give that a go and see how things look to you.
Then see how much hip extension your client can create in a prone position; knee bent to 90 degrees and ask them to drive their heel up to the ceiling. Measure the distance the knees gets off the ground and compare to the other side. If it’s less that a fist there is plenty of room for improvement, make sure that that keep their ASIS on the ground otherwise that’s where they’ll cheat.
So, before you go stretching the sh%& out of someone's hip flexors take a look at what's going on at their glutes first assess reassess and then decide what course of action is next if you need help with that hit me up and I'll be happy to assist.
