Exercises You Should Be Doing: Prone Hip Flexed Hip Rocking

Share This:

So yeah, I guess I was little more tired than I thought yesterday. I had every intention of coming home and writing up a little sumthin, sumthin, but instead I high-tailed it straight to bed for some much needed sleep. Needless to say, EC’s wedding was a blast. A few highlights:

– Instead of the traditional tapping of the glass, guests were encouraged to perform Eric Cressey approved push-ups to get the bride and groom to kiss. I think I performed 284 push-ups.

– I’m not one to brag or anything, but I’m pretty sure Cassandra Forsythe-Pribanic and I had the best entrance in the history of wedding party entrances during the reception. Cliff notes version: I did a little diddy, brought some sexy back, then took off my tux jacket and olayed Cass onto the dance floor as if she were a bull.

– There was some epic dancing on the dance floor to say the least. Lets see, there was a robot-off between myself and the one and only Roger Lawson, Eric getting molested Night at the Roxbury style by all the pro-baseball guys when CP favorite “We No Speak Americano” blasted through the speakers:

….and I’m pretty sure the entire exercise catalog of both Magnificent Mobility and Assess and Correct were displayed to some capacity on the dance floor. Who needs the Electric Slide when you can bust off some walking spidermans with hip lifts?

All in all, it was a great time and, and for the record, with him being gone for most of the week, we’re bringing back Tony’s Techno Tuesdays!! What, what.

Okay, with that out of the way lets talk about something that’s a little more pertinent to why you come to this blog in the first place. If you’re like most people, you have hips that resemble a crowbar. Put another way, people generally have really poor hip mobility, which in turn manifests itself into a plethora of other dysfunctions up and down the kinetic chain. Put yet another way, you move like shit.

I’d go so far as to say that 80-90% of the issues we come across – whether we’re talking about patellofemoral pain, lower back pain, or even shoulder pain – can be attributed (at least in part) to the fact that our hips are locked up. As such, it makes sense why it’s important to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to open them up. When you think about it, we spend a huge chunk of our day sitting on our asses between commuting to work, sitting at work, commuting from work, and then sitting even more at home. As an aside, don’t get me started on those who sit while at the gym. We’ve essentially gone out of our way to move less. God for bid you lose the remote control, or have to walk up a flight of stairs. Regardless, it’s no surprise that people generally have atrocious hip mobility – we sit in flexion all day long, the muscles surrounding the hip start to adaptively shorten, and then our movement quality goes out the window.

To that end, NOTHING will counteract laziness and/or poor programming choices, but we can certainly do a lot of good incorporating a proper dynamic warm-up before training which targets many of the “problem areas” that plague most trainees – namely the hips. While there are a million and one fantastic drills out there, one of the staples that I’ve been using quite a bit is this one:

What Is It: Prone Hip Flexed Hip Rocking

Who Did I Steal It From: former CP intern and strength coach, Kevin Neeld.

What Does It Do: helps to mobilize the hips into adduction/abduction.

Is That Not the Sexiest Camera Angle Ever: You’re damn right it is.

Key Coaching Cues: Starting in a quadruped position, flex one hip to 90 degrees. From there, simply “rock” side to side making sure to limit movement from the lumbar spine and focusing more on the hip capsule itself. It’s important to note that this is a self limiting exercise. Meaning, don’t be too concerned with range of motion here – just use what you have and try to improve on that as you go.

Try it today and let me know what you think!

Did what you just read make your day? Ruin it? Either way, you should share it with your friends and/or comment below.

Share This Post: