Postures to release tension from your deep hip muscles.
The hip joint is a ball and socket joint and is capable of movement in all directions. When the muscles around the hip joint are not balanced it can restrict some of these movements and cause irregular wear and tear of the joint surfaces over time. Making sure you address all of the muscles around the hip in your yoga practice will ensure excessive tension doesn’t build up over time and cause problems in the future.
In order to approach releasing tension from the muscles around the hip joint we can roughly group the muscles into 4 main areas:
FRONT OF THE HIP JOINT
Postures such as these will lengthen the hip flexors - such as the psoas, iliacus and pectineus.
Psoas, iliacus and pectineus
Virabhadrasana 1
Anjaneyasana
Anjanesasana variation
BACK OF THE HIP JOINT
Postures such as these will lengthen the hip extensors and deep hip rotators.
Deep hip rotators
Janu sirsasana
Triangmukaikapadapaschimottanasana
Ardha baddha padma pascimottanasana
Jathara parivartanasana variation
Sukhasana forward
OUTSIDE OF THE HIP JOINT
Postures such as these will lengthen the hip abductors - such as the gluteus maximus, minimus, medius and tensor fascia latae.
Gluteus maximus, medius and tensor fascia latae
Gluteus minimus and medius
Trikonasana
Parighasana
Parivrtta janu sirsasana
Outer hip stretch
INSIDE OF THE HIP JOINT
Postures such as these will lengthen the hip adductors - such as the pectineus, adductor brevis, longus, magnus and gracilis
Hip adductors
Parsvasahita
Ardha chandrasana
Virabhadrasana 2
Baddha konasana
If you are not used to practising range of postures that work on all of the surrounding muscles of the hip joints you may find a certain area that is restricted. If so, include postures from this group to create more balance. Most of us have one or more areas that are noticeably tighter than others. By reducing the tension in these areas our hips should be able to move more smoothly and have less general wear and tear. It is important to note that this is not always the full answer to balancing out the hip muscles; we may also require strengthening in some of these areas to create balance. This will be covered in another article.
written by Jean Campbell
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