I’ve been using a simple, yet highly effective exercise to increase my hip mobility. It involves training internal rotation of the hip joint, a movement that’s lacking in most people due to deskbound and commuting culture.
Cueing internal rotation helps align the hips and feet properly to make our movements, gait, and running patterns more efficient. For the grappling population, you will have more range of motion and active control of those ranges — in essence, more functionality on the mats.
The Intensity Required for Mobility Work
This is another mobility exercise with which you get really engage your musculature and focus. It’s not a passive exercise at all. You must squeeze the block intensely while at the same time consciously pulling those feet apart.
The entire time, focus also on keeping a long, relaxed breath. You should have some shaking and feel a dramatic rise in your body temperature if it’s one of your first exercises of the day.
Tips on Using This Hip Mobility Exercise
I couple this movement with my core activation series. That way, I’m targeting internal rotation of the hips while engaging my core: as always, seeking more bang for our buck with our training.
By cueing the internal rotation, we are helping to activate the obliques more, which contributes to a more stable midline. Then when we move to our full-fledged hip mobility series, our midline is stabilized, allowing the mobility work to “hit” our physiology in full effect.
Protocol
- Keep chin tucked to lengthen neck
- Place yoga block or something of similar size between knees
- Squeeze block with knees while pulling feet apart from one another
- Bring toes towards shins
- Breathe through your nose and your lower belly
- You should feel your hips moving internally in the sockets and should also feel your obliques engage more on the exhale breathe
Final Considerations on Hip Mobility Primer
As I mentioned in one of the first sections, this exercise will require some intensity with the squeeze of the block and pulling apart of the feet. Keep breathing calmly, but you should feel tightness in your muscular system.
This is the goal because this is how we communicate to the nervous system to accept and embrace this newfound range of motion.
When you begin to move around, you should feel your feet a bit more straight and also find that you have more control of each individual hip. Great attributes for lifelong vitality as well as performance with pursuits such as BJJ!
I cover more performance training tidbits at mobillitytraining.com that will help you prepare, recover, and perform better on the mats!
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