Move Your Butt: Hip/Knee Exercises-Part 1
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Loading ...Possibly the most important thing each of us can learn regarding fitness, is that the body will do it’s level best to fit into whatever container we pour it into most frequently. For many of us, that container is an office chair chained to a desk. The long term effects of sitting all day have been well established in the literature, with one of the more interesting findings being that prolonged time spent in a chair represents a risk factor for lumbar disc herniation. The hips and knees are also adversely affected by prolonged sitting.
In the last posting, we learned a bit about how prolonged sitting can result in shortening of the hip flexors. The psoas (so azz) muscles are attached to the front of the lumbar spine, way back behind your guts. They cross the front of the pelvis, and attach way up high to the inside part of the thigh bone. They’re the muscles that lift your knee up toward your chest when standing. When their resting length is shortened in response to too much time in a chair, the hip extensors (gluteal or buttock muscles) are inhibited in their function due to Sherrington’s Law (see last blog posting “Move Your Butt…Introduction to the Hip-Knee Connection”). Czech neurologist, Vladimir Janda, termed this imbalance the “lower cross syndrome”. This process can have nasty ramifications on the hip and knee in athletes, resulting in ACL injury, ITB friction syndrome, patello-femoral tracking disorder, hip bursitis, and sciatica.
The way out of the box is to vary our body positions regularly. How regularly? Ergonomics research suggests we should perform 20-30 second microbreaks every 20 minutes we are stuck in a chair. This video shows you a few quick exercises to help stretch the hip flexors and strengthen the gluteal muscles in that amount of time. If it’s tight buns you’re after, these are a good start. In that case, spend 5-10 minutes on these about 5 days/week. In the future, we’ll post more videos of more advanced exercises for the hip to help decrease knee/hip pain, improve athletic performance, decrease injury risk and help make your jeans fit a bit better! Enjoy, stay active, and leave comments or questions below rather than emailing me directly so I can respond to them and we all can benefit from the discussion.
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3 Responses
Kitty
July 31st, 2009 at 4:57 pm
1I am very glad to have found your site. I sit a LOT at my job, and my hips are really getting so painful that when I get up to walk to the restroom or whatever, I need to just stand for a few minutes to let them sort of warm up so nobody else will know how much pain I’m in. Seriously I feel like a total cripple lately. I think pretty much it’s a matter of stiff hip flexors so I’m going to try to incorporate these 3 moves into my day and see if they help. I think they will be more effective longterm than a cortisone shot which is all my doc offers.
Dr. Snell
August 12th, 2009 at 5:05 am
2Hey Kitty,
Current ergonomics literature suggests that you need to break that sustained sitting posture for 20-30 seconds every 20-30 minutes and over correct your posture. Do a few of these exercises at those intervals to help. Given the level of pain you are having, you might also want to do a deep, sustained lunge stretch every 3-4 hours as well. Set a timer to remind you so that you can address the issue before the pain reminds you. They will help to address the cause for most hip pain if your doctor has already ruled out other causes for pain in that area. Good luck!
Can Running Help Your Knees?
August 14th, 2009 at 9:14 pm
3[...] help with knee tracking and stability. Some of these exercises look a bit familiar as we showed similar versions on previous videos. Others highlight some basic, good pointers on squat mechanics which are incredibly important and [...]
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