Yoga for Happy Hips: Rotators

Marisa's Class Notes:

External Rotation – the “Deep Six” external rotators attaching from sacrum and pelvis to femur + gluteous maximus, with a little help from some of your hip flexors and adductors. Most of us have some natural turn out here because of how our thigh bones sit in the acetabulum. But many of us have more turn out than that because these muscles are tight from every postures esp. sitting and stressing. This can lead to piriformis syndrome (often called sciatica) as one of the deep six – the piriformus – gets tight and applies pressure to the sciatic nerve. If these are tight for you, a very simply way to stretch them is to change your standing posture so that the insides of your feet are parallel instead of turned out.

Find your external rotators with Gary's Twist - lie on back, take one leg over body into twist.  Turning from hips, turn kneecap toward sky.  You should feel this distinctly in your bottom.

Internal Rotation – the internal rotators and the abductors are one and the same – minimus, medius, and tfl with a little help from a couple of your hams.

Normal range of motion for both is about 45 degrees. We will explore this in our practice where you should feel the movement of internal rotation under the hand on your hip.  In external rotation, try to shift the work out of the space under your hand and into your bottom, nearer your sacrum.

Happy Hips: Yoga for Adductors (inner thighs) and Abductors (outer hips)

From the second in our Happy Hips Series Class...

Marisa's Notes:

Adductors – muscles of the inner thigh. Some are short, some are long. All connect sequentially to thigh bone or lower leg bones. All connect to pubic bone (and one also connects to SITZ). These muscles bring your legs together (ADD them together!)  Need a visual?  Check here and look for the inner thigh muscles.

Find them - Lie down, use a strap to help find your adductors. Be sure they are all inner thigh, not the inside back of your thigh (the inner hamstring often stretches with the adductors). Reasonable ROM here is supine, 90 degrees at hips, take leg to the side. Each side should be able to achieve 45 degree angle or more without lifting opposite hip or changing hip crease angle. Bear in mind, this assumes normal ROM in hams. When strengthened in asana, these muscles are major stabilizers, bringing in your center of gravity and taking excess work from surrounding muscles.

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Abductors – Outer hip. These guys really hold your leg in the hip socket and help with everyday activities like walking. Tensor Fascia Latae TFL (talked about last week), gluteus medius and gluteus minimus.  Need a visual?  Look here.

Find your abductors – lie on your side, hand on hip between the top of your pelvis and the head of your thigh bone. Lift leg with knee pointing straight ahead (no rotation) and no movement of pelvis, you should feel those muscles engage. This is also a great way to strengthen. Good ROM varies, mostly due to the restriction of other muscles and the shape of your acetabulum.

These are also stabilizers and worked against one another, the adds and abs can help you gain more space in your hip and better balance. See if you can activate these muscles in the standing leg of you tree pose. While working against each other, you can also gain greater ROM in flexion and extension as they seat the hip. In other words, its worth playing with these muscles isometically in most yoga poses, even (maybe especially as it will increase your proprioception) when they are being stretched.

In the accompanying practice, you may wish to do Yin Half Frog if your adductors are a great deal tighter on one side than the other.  Spend more time on the side that is tighter and do the looser side first (this sends signals to the tighter side to begin to let go).  To do half frog, lie on your belly and take one leg out to the side, right angles in ankle, knee and hip.

For the Trikonasana (Triangle pose)  be sure to work to keep the back abductors (outer hip) engaged as you move.   This is not easy but will greatly develop your awareness.

This adductor/abductor practice can be integrated with the flexor extensor practice.  Do all the yin, then all the Slow Flow asana, and don't forget your Savasana.

Yoga for Happy Hips! Flexors and Extensors

We are starting up a series for Happy Hips tonight at Yoga del Sol.  Exploring anatomy, yin asana and slow flow movement for better functioning hips.  Juicy!  Here is the home practice for our first week - working with flexors and extensors.  Short and sweet :-)  And for those of you that are geeks like me, you can find my class notes below...

Complex joint – Femur head into the acetabulum of pelvis.

Ligaments hold the bone in the socket and allow it range of motion in every direction.

Muscularly very complex. Muscles to move the femur in all those directions, many performing more than one action. All these muscles attach to other aspects of the body, creating a variety of tug of wars up into the back and belly, down into the knees.

So, if your hips aren't happy, chances are something else isn't happy either. And chances are good that that something else made itself known before the hips became obvious.

Common ailments of the hips..

Osteo-Arthritis – inflammation of the joint

Osteoporosis – loss of bone density

Bursitis – inflammation of the bursa (the fluid filled cushions within the joint)

Sciatica/Piriformis Syndrome – Sciatica comes from the vertabra, not a hip condition tho it sure feels like it! Piriformis Syndrone is the compression of the sciatic nerve.

Stand up and try all movements...

Hips can flex, extend, internally rotate, externally rotate, abduct, adduct.

We will focus on flexion and extension today.

Hip Flexors = quads, iliopsoas, tfl, with a little help from your adductors

Are you tight or loose in the flexors?

Lie down and draw one knee in toward your chest, allowing the extended leg to be completely relaxed. If that extended leg pops up, you've got tight flexors.

Normal range of motion is 125 degrees for flexion.

Now, if you don't have normal range of motion, that may not be the fault of your flexors, but of your extensors that are the antagonists to flexion.

Extensors = Hams, Gluteous Maximus

If you had trouble drawing your knee toward your chest, you may have a tight gluteous maximus. It may also be about your low back

How do you know if your hams are tight? Stand up in Mountain Pose and put your hands on your low back, notice the lumbar curve. With your knees straight but not locked, begin to fold at the hip crease (what is this?). Stop when it feels like you can go no further without bending your knees or rounding your low back. Your flexors just made that happen! If your hams are tight you will not have achieved the normal range of motion of 80 degrees flexion that your hams should allow for. As for extension, normal extension for the hip is 10-15 degrees. If you are not able to achieve this, its possible that your flexors are tight or your extensors are weak (they are notorious for this).

In order to truly strengthen muscles, they need a certain amount of flexibility. If they are too tight, there won't be reasonable communication to the muscle fibers, as well the muscle fibers will not be able to contract as they are already tight. This is why the stretch is as important as the strength. We will be starting our practices with yin yoga to provide this stretch. Yin affects the ligaments, tendons, and fascia that surrounds the muscles, as well as the muscles themselves. We begin with this passive stretch before moving into stretch AND strengthen to build strength and greater flexibility.

Practice