Improve This Hip Exercise And Improve Your Whole Life
Ok, maybe that was a tad hyperbolic…but kinda not!
Hinging from the hip means not borrowing range of motion from the spine, which is all around nicer to your body over time. Hinging from the hip happens ALL OVER THE PLACE: every time you reach down to pick something up, lean over to wash your face, pick laundry off the floor etc, and yes, when you do a squat, a lunge, supine ab work, quadruped leg kicks, even your sideline series in my classes. My point is, we’re doin it a lot…which is a lot of opportunities to get it wrong.
Make exercise fit into your busy schedule
As I’ve said a million times before, we spend an hour a day tops exercising, 7 days a week at best- and I don’t recommend any more than that! That’s 7 out of 168 hours. The remaining 161 we are either sleeping (hopefully) or doing something else. We spend MUCH more time absentmindedly using our muscles to perform the tasks it takes to do our jobs and housework etc;. THIS is where the magic- or the opposite, really, happens. Awareness of proper biomechanics is KEY- because once you know how to correctly do a movement, you can build it into muscle memory and it can become second nature. That means you won’t have to worry about adding strain to your low back once that awareness becomes built in.
Heal back pain with functional movement
Understanding how to hinge from the hip, instead of round at the spine helps take tension off the back, tension that becomes pain over time. When you compensate in the back instead of hinging cleanly at the hip your low back takes over and it is NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT. You’ll probably feel the result of that compensation immediately (ever been brushing your teeth and your back started to ache? You probably were flexing at your spine instead of using your core and hinging at the hip). Doing this every once in a while might feel like NBD, but like I said, we spend quite a bit of our life hinging ( or attempting to) from the hip, and doing it incorrectly can lead to some buzz killing pain after a while.
How to improve back pain with pilates
I wouldn’t lead you on without telling you how to fix it!
Check out this video to relearn your hip hinge and perfect your squat. And I’ll do ya one more, if you want more hip exercises, check out the HEALTHY HIPS collection on Helen Phelan Studio (free for the first 10 days!)
Other articles you might be interested in:
10 Ways To Fit Exercise Into A Busy Schedule
How Your Fitness Tracker Can Sometimes Be Bad For Your Health
How Self Care Is (And Isn’t) Wellness
20 Reasons To Workout That Have Nothing To Do With Weight Loss
Exercising To Lose Weight Is The Quickest Way To Burn Out On Fitness