Squat and Bench Quick Fix-Ouch My Hips
Tight hips can mess up a good squat or bench.
Or deadlift.
In normal society, we sit all day. Driving. At a desk. On the couch.
This is not great for your spine or for your total.
When the hips are jacked up we have trouble getting depth in the squat, getting hip drive in the bench and pain.
Pain is never good. It’s your body telling you something is wrong.
If we can get the hips to loosen up (not too much) a bigger squat and a better bench is always around the corner.
The trouble is how?
I have a hip that is about 90% jacked up and I’ve been trying to fix it so I can stay in the game.
I do a lot of stretches, mobility work and soft tissue work via massage and Graston/ART but it wasn’t working fast enough for a long time.
I added in a standard Couch Stretch a while ago and found that my quads were about as tight as piano wire. This transferred to my hips over time.
Place your knee on a pad and elevate your foot on a bench or a box.
Put the other one in front as if you were doing a lunge.
Squeeze the glute of the knee that is on the floor and keep your torso erect.
I said erect.
The Couch Stretch helped but once you reach a normal level of flexibility, it gets limited.
I put my thinking cap on and decided to add a banded hip distraction to it to jack the effectiveness up in true EliteFTS style.
Done the same as a couch stretch, but add an Average band high on the hip just under the glute of the knee that is on the floor.
Placing a band around the back of your hip while performing this stretch increases the effectiveness by forcing the hip forward in the joint. I won’t bore you with all the A&P stuff that is going on, but trust me, it is the right thing to do in certain situations.
The trouble I had was bracing my body while doing the banded distraction. If you lose the abdominal brace you place a fair amount of unneeded pressure on the lumbar spine and as we all know, that is never good.
The spine gets enough of a beating in training, at our jobs and in life. There is no need to add to it if you can help it.
I decided to get my $$ worth out of the Erect-A-Rack Matty sold me and used the Dip Attachment handle to brace against.
Done the same as the last but with more jacked up effectiveness.
This took the abs totally out of the equation and allowed me to focus on the stretch entirely, making it more effective.
This is without a doubt, my favorite quad/hip stretch.
I suggest starting out with a few sets of 30 second holds the first week. I hold for about 90 seconds now and do some foam rolling in between on the IT and quad.
Limited static stretching before you train WILL NOT hurt you, especially if you have pain and this decreases it.
Give it a shot and watch your squat and bench improve.
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Vincere vel mori
