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Mobility Log November 27, 2018 Warm-Up 50 bodyweight squats Slight discomfort in right knee and some tenderness in right groin area (DOMS from sumo squat work, no doubt). Overall, feels good. Daily 5 (3) Since I’m focusing a lot on hip flexors with the Master The Squat routine, I’m leaving them out of the “Daily 5” for now. Also, the groin/hip flexor area is a bit sensitive from sumo squats, so I want to take it easy. The side bends and twists I’m also leaving out, as they are covered to some extent during some of the limbering movements in Master The Squat (e.g. Baby Flop) Floor Upper & Middle back stretch Felt pretty good. I have an old injury in my right lower thoracic spine area..probably the right extensor. In flexion, I can feel it hanging on tighter than the surrounding muscles. It’s hard to know what a good amount of stretch is for this particular problem area, because it’s hard to distinguish between existing protective tension and tension coming on as an automatic danger response to any movement. Elbow Back Bend It’s always a bit tricky to know where to place my elbows in setup. I have a hunch (literally) that I am holding them a bit too close to my abdomen. It’s become a lot easy to feel my bodyweight resting on the arms, though, and I have to acknowledge the generally more spacious feeling I have in my lower back. It used to be that any sort of extension would immediately bring on a pinching sensation. Floor Piriformis Stretch A bit of a mystery. As with many piriformis stretches, I feel this in the front of the groin. If I add a contract and push my stretched side against my bracing arm, I can feel the muscles in the outer hip activate, and momentarily, I don’t feel restriction in the groin area, but the moment I release that contraction, the tightness in the groin returns. The seated piriformis stretch is one of the few that seems to target the muscles its supposed to. I’m not sure why this particular stretch sidesteps the groin impingement I feel. Better not to ask questions? Master The Squat L1: Sumo Squat A limbering movement I’ll be sure to do every day. It feels great. I noticed that my arches tend to collapse, allowing my knees to come in and reducing the effectiveness of the stretch. So, that’s something I have to focus on. L3: Boxing the Compass Almost all positions feel a primary restriction in the groin area. However, with the right leg “back,” in the “6 O’Clock” position (as seen from above...legs in line with one another), I do feel the stretch going further up the adductor. L4: Baby Flop Using a bolster at the moment to make sure that I am keeping my core supported, even when I allow the spine to round into flexion. Moving over either leg in the forward position elicits a very strong stretch in the side back muscles (don’t know their names...gotta check an anatomy chart). At the moment, it feels like a good stretch! The important thing for me is to move into it carefully. I feel like I’m approaching the limits of my body’s “safe zone” and that I need to move in and out of it carefully. L7: Seated Figure 4 Tried doing this on a bolster today. Still feeling it in the adductors primarily. However, after a few days of doing them “goal free,” the movement feels a bit freer. Will continue to work with my hips on a bolster for the time being. E6: Standing Knee Lift I thought I’d include this as a kind of benchmark to see where I’m at. Left knee can go comfortably 30 degrees past horizontal. Right knee gets stuck at about horizontal. Other Cool-Down Spinal Waves - 5 Minutes

Hello everyone, First off: I realize that all I can get from Internet advice is an educated guess on the issue, but that is my only option as I have pretty much no access to medical professionals of any kind. —— A few weeks ago I started practicing the half lotus (after a year of working with Kit's material including the lotus video and many others) since things were coming along especially in the hips. From the start there was light pain in the knee cap area during the pose. I figured it wasn't a big concern since it was not on the meniscus side, so I started trying it for a few minutes at time. One morning, soon after I held it for about 15 minutes on each side, and after coming out I noticed that my knees had become quite sore. The pain subsided quickly after getting up, but it would come back whenever I tried to bend the knees a lot, including in the usual burmese pose I always used to do with no issues. It has gotten slightly better, but it's been about 3 weeks. The pain is now limited to the left leg only, which has always been my tightest, especially since I've always sat right-first in Burmese pose. Any strong bending at the knees where hip abduction is involved seems to be a problem (Cobbler's Pose, Janu Sirsasana Burmese Pose), and deep squats too. Apart from this there is no pain. Pigeon Pose is fine. Interestingly, I can do the lying quad stretch (or hero pose) where the knee is bent almost maximally without discomfort. Here of course there is no external rotation nor abduction at the hip. Also, my cossack squat on the left leg has always been more unstable, and less deep than on the right, sometimes with a little bit of pain too. Right now I wouldn't even try a cossack. So I was just wondering if all this rings any bells to anyone here. My guess so far had been tightness in the quads, but the seemingly crucial role of the hip confuses me. Should I continue to stretch the quads (or something else) or rather refrain from it? Other things that might aid both recovery and prevention? Any insights appreciated.

I’ve been trying to improve my straddle & middle splits by holding the straddle stretch for one minute, doing frog splits and holding them and doing wall/lazy straddle splits. The issue I think I’m having is that every time I do this stretches I only feel the stretch in my outer hips or with my straddle splits- outer hip & hamstrings close to my knee. I thought the straddle splits required inner thigh/abductor flexibility so I’m a bit confused. Can someone explain what this indicates . I’ve been stretching consistently for the past 2 weeks but I have always felt this discomfort. Thanks

Hi folks, First time poster. I'm working through the pancake series, currently around 20 degrees past vertical with a nice straight back. In general, while going through my stretches, (typically most evident in skandasana, tailor pose, reaching triangle, standing hip flexor), when I change movements, I often have to adjust/pop my hip. As if there is some laxity in the hip socket and it needs to adjust itself to the center for a new movement. I'd compare it to the kind of adjustment you get from a chiropractor, it's not painful but it can be annoying sometimes (i.e. I know I won't have good ROM until I get it to 'pop' back to the correct position.) What's going on here? Other times when I'm doing some movements to dynamically loosen up the hips, I can here little noises (no pain or discomfort) like the hip bone is gliding over some stubborn scar tissue or something like that, I've never had any major hip/groin/quad/hamstring injuries. My uneducated intuition is telling me I have a strength imbalance in the muscles stabilizing the hip joint. My quads/hamstrings are on the tighter side of the spectrum but is there a test I can do to identify the issue? It seems to get stuck towards the front of the hip socket, why is this? TIght quads/hip flexors? Weak glutes? A combo? Finally, is this just a normal part of progression? Do I need to cool my jets? Good luck people!

Hello, I first experienced some pain in my right hip last year, thought it was something temporary and went on with exercising. Capoeira, skateboarding, GST training and some running. Sometimes after exercise I could feel a sharp pain in the right groin area of my hip, the pain was often there for just a couple of hours after working out and then went away. After some time I decided to visit a Physiotherapist and took an MRI on both of my hips. The difference was clearly between my left and right hip. The physio suspected hip impingement on my right side. He gave me a couple of exercises in order to build up strength in the glutes and around the hips and told me that surgery was the last option. After some months with these rehab exercises I could barely feel any difference at all, the groin pain was still there, especially when rotating the hip inward. It's really frustrating because of the limits in range of motion I have on my right hip. Sometimes I can hear a snapping sound coming from the femur and it doesn't sound god. I'm in the thoughts of having surgery because I feel there is not much that I can do to make it better myself. Tried foam rolling, stretching and different mobility exercises for the hips. When i'm for example stretching for middle splits, specially the frog stretch, I can feel a sharp pain in the right groin area. So now to my questions: Can impingement in the hips be treated with stretching over a long period of time? Anyone else here on the forum dealing with the same or similar problem? Have anyone done surgery? If so, how long was the recovery time and how did you feel afterwards? Thank you. Best regards Andreas

Hi people, this is my first post here. (Just starting with Kit's pancake series after doing other types of stretching without getting much results.) I have a situation with my hips and hamstrings that leaves me puzzled: Bending over with straight legs, legs together, my maximum range is flat hand on the floor with the heel of the hand almost touching the ground. However, some days I'm so tight that I can only reach halfway down my calves with my fingertips. Which means about 40 centimeters less range, considering that the heel of my hand is up by the knee! It feels like the tightness is in my hamstrings, to the point where they could be contributing to lower back pain. While hamstring limbering eventually would get me to my end range, it took a lot of work. Then a while ago I tried doing hip flexor stretches first, and after just a little hip stretching, I could get to my end range in the forward bend. And the effect is immediate. For example this morning, again not even able to touch my ankles, I tried the Chinese hip grinder. One little set of five seconds on each hip, and bam! I could get my almost my whole palm on the ground in the forward bend. It's like magic. How can this be? I thought - and it still feels like - my hamstrings are limiting my compression, not the hip flexors. (My top priority right now is getting enough straddle compression to perform a press to handstand.) How can the hip flexors be hindering my compression? I thought that tightness here would limit my ability to open my hip, not close it. I might expect some impact, but not this dramatic. The fact remains, a little hip stretching improves my compression immediately, releases hamstring tightness and alleviates hamstring DOMS and back pain. Has anybody else had similar experiences? Cheers, Børge