Has anyone here improved their HF Flexibility/No longer Has Tight HF's?

[arbo]

Has anyone here improved their HF Flexibility to the point where they would now say they're flexible/loose? I'm currently surprised at by how tight mine are and stay, so I'm wondering :
 1) Is 'flexibility' really more about constantly loosening them up/i.e. warming them up? Like a track athlete doing different warm ups for the hips, etc

 2) Can they be improved at baseline? I want to know if I can permanently lengthen them and stop the tight HF's, kind of like be 'cold' but still have loose HF's

Just purchased the $15 Master the Squat and Hip Mobility course, so hopefully that will also give me some answers

edit: Edit to add, I guess this was stupid. I think the answer must be OF COURSE we can improve HF flexibility, otherwise how could people go from not being able to third world squat to get into that? So please ignore this thread, I would delete it if I could

[SwissDanny]

There is a beautiful irony to this since the OP wanted the thread deleted anyway!

[Kit_L]

@SD: true, but we are relentless! Nathan and Ashwin will likely re-post their original replies, edited, perhaps. In the meantime, the answer to: "Has anyone here improved their HF Flexibility to the point where they would now say they're flexible/loose?" is definitely.

Mine went from averagely tight (check out the Kit-demos-stretching-his-HFs images in Stretching & Flexibility for un-photoshopped reality!) to now, where mine (and Olivia's even more so) are genuinely loose. I can get my back leg on the ground fully any session these days. In my case it took about two years; in DW's case, about the same, IIRC. And Dave demos truly supple HFs on the cover of the second edition of Stretching & Flexibility (he wrote somewhere that this photo session changed his HFs forever). 

Partner work is essential in this regard. In my experience, if you are an average to strong male, there is no method I know whereby you can apply enough force to stretch these babies by yourself (the strap-assisted standing HF comes close, though). You need a heavy training partner to sit on your back leg, once a week or once a fortnight. Over time, amazing changes will occur. Women, speaking most generally (because there are exceptions) can relax into HF stretches; most men cannot.

@arbo: the mind will always come up with these kind of objections; this is normal and entirely predictable. Just do the work, and see what happens. Thanks for re-posting! 

This will help, too:

Reason I added this one is that recently two people with lower back pain looked very loose when doing both the floor quad. stretch and the partner hip flexor stretch (part one, that works rectus femoris), but when both ends were stretched at the same time (as this exercise above does) they both looked like complete beginners. Working the pose above changed their back pain immediately.

This shows (among other things) how little we understand about what's happening in the body. Neither of these people (both more flexible than me in the two separate exercises) could get anywhere near the position I am demonstrating here.

I think the deep fascial front line (with its connection to psoas) is the hidden limiting factor. This exercise is in Stretching & Flexibility (one of the "Ultimate" exercises, the last lesson), and if you compare the position I am demonstrating there to the one immediately above you can see that my hip extension has improved ~30° over the intervening 12 years (the video above was shot two years ago in Vancouver). My hip flexors are looser now. There is no doubt at all that these critical muscles can be permanently lengthened.

[Nathan]

My original reply:

No worries, this is something we all feel somewhere in our training (usually our weakest points) :)

It's easy to imagine that those other people who can do something must be somehow fundamentally different, but the good news is that we're all fundamentally the same for the most part. The time and effort required to achieve something will vary depending on where you're starting, you're background, etc., but with consistent (and preferably smart) work the vast majority of results are possible.

Hip flexors are one that many, many of us can relate to due to the modern lifestyle. I'm afraid I can't offer any benchmarks since mine are far from loose, but I also haven't put much effort into the HF yet.

Let us know how your journey is going once you've played with Master the Squat

[Jim Pickles]

Hip flexors - mine have got substantially looser over the years (e.g. as in a photo of a ringsplit which I posted some time ago but wont look for now as wife is saying that I am spending too long on the computer). I also do partner stretches with my students - not the sitting one in Kits video but ex. 49 on p. 116 of Stretching and Flexibility. This targets the iliopsoas very effectively. However I find that people who are already relatively loose do not seem to get much from it - I wonder if once the limit is in the connective tissue (mainly ligaments?) around the hip joint then it seems less effective.

What has made a major difference for me is a deep held suspended lunge - with the buttock muscles of the leg that is going back clenched hard all the time. Held for e.g. 3 minutes. This seems to produce a substantial loosening of the whole front of the hip and means that I can pop into the splits easily afterwards.

Soon I hope to produce a video of my own routine for front splits which I hope people will find useful.

However this stretch does not target the rectus femoris or all of the "the deep fascial front line (with its connection to psoas) [..] the hidden limiting factor" - I suspect these remain a limitation in a total backbend. Something like the partner stretch in the video above would be better but I do not do it as I usually work on my own stretches on my own.

Jim.

 

[Tones]

Another thing to look at is lumbar seat support.

[Kit_L]

@Tones: can you elaborate, please?

@Jim Pickles, who wrote:

Quote

 also do partner stretches with my students - not the sitting one in Kits video but ex. 49 on p. 116 of Stretching and Flexibility. This targets the iliopsoas very effectively.

Jim, the third part of the partner-sitting-on-your-back-leg sequence will stretch everyone. From the master the Full Backbend program, E2 (Partner floor hip flexor) and 12 Stretching Limbering: E9A–E9B Wall Quad–Hip Flexor are the keys (part three of the former; and the combined effect of the latter).

Not until the whole of the back leg is on the ground (Partner floor hip flexor) can the third part be done: lifting the spine away from the floor using the arms—this powerfully stretches ilio-psoas and, until rectus femoris is loose enough to allow this starting position, the body has too many ways of avoiding the necessary stressors. I do like the standing hip flexor, but until the body is really loose, most people's strength is not sufficient to overcome the pelvis anterior tilting effects of the HFs. The various enhancements of the Partner floor HF overcome this completely.

Not shown on the videos, but used on all workshops since I designed the technique, is (once the shoulders are above, or behind, the hips, and with the back leg hard on the floor) traction on the arm on the working side with a vertical trunk. Two new contractions can be added to the basic ones: working against the tractioned arm and the elbow on the seat of a bench or chair, strong abdominal and HF contractions (first, trying to press elbows onto chair seat and, after the arm traction is aded, a strong lat contraction (like trying to do a one-arm chin against the partner's traction; I usually ask the stretchee to hold onto my traps, while I hold their upper arm). The deep fascial effect is immense.

I urge all teachers to attend workshops; we discount for all past attendees. I say this because it's obvious reading the threads that some of you are not au fait with the latest techniques. 

[Jim Pickles]

Kit - many thanks for that information. This is clearly an enormous stretch, and would be suitable next time I teach the group splits class. I am interested in the comment about fascia being involved - it is my impression too, since the tightnesses and their response to movement cannot be entirely decomposed into muscle lines and connections. Not sure it would be suitable for my regular weekly classes though, as they are mainly elderly/old and most are working round issues in their bodies (though there is one 70-yr old male who it might be OK for - I'll look carefully next week and see).

" Not until the whole of the back leg is on the ground (Partner floor hip flexor) can the third part be done: lifting the spine away from the floor using the arms "

Here, because the forward leg is raised with the knee bent, does this mean that the hip has gone into an oversplit?

I guess about applying force via the arms and trunk in the later part of the exercise - I emphasise keeping the forces "in the hips" as much as possible - using the muscles within the hips to provide force where possible, rather than transmitted via the spine (e.g. from the arms). This is to protect the sacroiliac joint. I have had some students in my classes with sacroiliac joint problems (which occurred before they came to me) and I have had them myself (from all the stretching - though that joint seems now to have fused, and gives no problems). For instance in a forward bend (hamstring stretch) I discourage anything more than a mild pull of the torso forward with the arms - my cues are things like pull the fronts of the hip bones down onto the thighs using muscles within the hips, lift the tailbone, push the groins up to the ceiling, feel as though you are lifting with the backs of the thighs. With practice these work, though my memory is that for years these cues did nothing for me. But given my demographic, I would prefer to be cautious even if it means being less effective. I also hope that e.g. using the iliacus to tilt the hip forward on the femur, will encourage the hamstring to relax by reciprocal inhibition. I see others give similar cues in the pancake - encouraging muscles within the hips to roll the hips forward.

As for the solo classes, as I said earlier, I use minimal physical contact, though I can see that my present solo student could benefit from this version - maybe I can show her the video first and see if she is OK with it (though the difference in size and weight may be an issue).

I do try to keep up with the latest ideas, e.g. as shown in your videos, and in any training classes I go to. From these, I select those that I think are most suitable for the particular demographic I currently teach, and of course always experiment a lot on myself. Of course too, I would indeed benefit from workshops.

Cheers, Jim.