Over
the years I have received lots of emails from people noticing all kinds of
things that can contribute to decreased flexibility…
Here is
one I received from a Mother (and dance teacher) with a few questions about
tension in the hip flexors. This is related to some things that we discuss in
the Front Splits Fast program so I thought
that you would appreciate the answers I gave her.
“Hi Lisa!
I am really excited to start
working with your program both with my own kids (golf, soccer, hapkido, track)
and with all of the ballet students that I teach.
I feel that any question I ask
right now might be premature since I have not yet started the program, but I
will go ahead and shoot them off because this is an area I have been studying
and researching for years. The little girl who is playing Clara in my
Nutcracker this year is a very strong, dedicated dancer. Her main holdback has
been her turn-out. She seems to have extremely tight (sometimes painful) hip
flexors which makes turning out very limited. She is also quite involved in
swimming. I have noticed with other dancers who swim that they also have tight
hips. One student who did not have any tightness started swimming for PE in
high school, and also immediately started complaining of sore hips. Is there
any relation? Can the hip flexors be a big problem both in flexibility and
turnout range? Can there be improvement with proper care and knowledge as in
your program?
Also, my son is involved in
Hapkido. He is very aware of good stretching and seems to be quite flexible.
However, he seems to always also be tight in his hip flexors, and seems to
regularly pull his hamstring (way up high into his hip). Is it possible there
is just a weakness here, or after being injured can’t quite completely heal? He
continues a cycle of going regularly to class, injuring himself, stopping
because of the pain, waiting for it to feel better, and then continuing again.
I know how busy you are, so if you
have any time to address my questions I will feel extremely honored. I have
greatly enjoyed all of the information in the Perfect Pointe System and thank
you for your dedication and wisdom.
Sincerely,
Kelly M ( Tustin , California )”
Hi
Kelly, and thanks so much for your question! Yes, there is definitely a
relationship with tension in the hips flexors and reduced turnout and
flexibility, and also between reduced turnout and flexibility and tension in
the hips! It is one of those “which came first… the chicken or the egg?”
scenarios!
If it
is hard to turn the hip out fully, when we attempt to lift the leg into retiré
(passé) a little muscle over the front/side of the hip called your TFL often
works much harder than it is designed for. (You will learn more about this
muscle in the program). Overuse can obviously cause pain and tension in the
hips. Tension in this muscle will then block turnout, especially when in
standing. So therefore, if there is already less turnout range, and a student
is repeatedly lifting their leg into retiré, then they will unfortunately tend
to get tighter if there technique is not very good.
In
relation to swimming, there are two possible reasons for the tension developing
in the hips.
1) How
much Breaststroke have each of the students been doing? While swimming
freestyle can be great for releasing tension in the spine, depending on the
technique of the swimmer (or lack thereof…) tension may build in the hips from
repeated hip flexion during breaststroke. If technique is sound, I do not see
that this should be a problem, and I personally swam considerable distances at
competative level when I was dancing with no detrimental effect!
2) The
other thing that I would take a look at is the posture that both your son and
your ‘Clara’ stand in outside of class. I have discovered that one of the
biggest contributors to tight hips in students is their casual standing
posture, as opposed to the posture that they hold in class. Especially note if
they tend to tilt the pelvis forward (bottom out), or sit into one hip. Posture
may also be affected if the student is getting cold after swimming and sits
huddled with the hips flexed to keep warm (a very common position).
Swimming
is a great adjunct to dancing as it can give a good form of cardiovascular
exercise without any load on the feet or lower limbs. Perhaps just reduce the
amount of breaststroke that they are both doing for a few weeks and see if this
changes things.
With
your son, often recurrent strains of the hamstring are due to underlying tension in the nerves (has he had a recent
growth spurt?) or an imbalance in the strength of his hamstrings
and gluteals (buttock muscles). We will be discussing the issue of neural
tension in detail in the dvds, so make sure that you follow all of the testing
carefully and try the releases on him to see the difference. I am sure that he
will notice a difference straight away!
This is
a great reminder to us all that it is often what we do with our bodies outside of class that
dictate how mobile it is in any given direction. Always be mindful of your
posture and how this can affect your mobility.
There
are lots of gentle hip release techniques in the program, so once your DVDs
arrive, work on that section to discover new ways of improving the mobility in
this area!
Let me
know what you discover!
Kindest
regards,
Lisa
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