Monday Mobility – Hip Opener no 1

Hip Mobility is a constant question here at Wild Geese.

Many of the athletes I work with are martial artists and many of the so called “normal folk” have come here after running the gamut of “normal gyms” and are looking for something better.

And when they witness some of the movements that my longer term clients can pull off with ease, then they want a piece of that pie.

And having open and mobile hips is a big part of the pie.

I write fairly frequently about the three prongs of fitness, these being:

Strength – Mobility – Endurance

Strength is easy. Plenty of guys come into me already strong. Endurance can be too. I’ve plenty of endurance athletes training with me.

Mobility though is where most people fall down.

And can be a massive contributor to why they break.

Mobile people, ie properly mobile, not just overstretched and floppy, are hard to break. These are people who have built strength all the way through the entire joint range of motion.

They understand how far a joint can go and have the power in reserve to pull it back before it goes too far.

So with that in mind, I’m bringing back Monday Mobility.

Starting with this one: “Hip Opener No 1”

As you can guess from the title, there’s more than one of these hip openers, I’ll cover the others in future posts (which is why you should be subscribed!)

Here’s Hip Opener no 1 as posted on my Instagram jobbie the other day:

Hip opener no. 1 This is a martial arts inspired hip mobility drill. If you’ve ever practiced Tai Chi, you’ll recognise the “squatting single whip” technique. Don’t let the Tai Chi reference put you off, this simple drill develops excellent strength and mobility through the hips which is instantly applicable to any athlete / martial artist Notice the marker pen I hold at my navel, you can see how it traces a circle as you sit back, shift forwards and pop back up. Start this slowly with a small circle, as your hips open you can gradually incrw the circle size and the speed of the movement. Keep it smooth no matter how far or fast you go. If you have strength and mobility already, try loading this by holding a kettlebell in the goblet squat position. #mobility #hipmobility #martialarts #flexibility #strength #irishfitfam #movement #wgfamily #bjj #wildgeese www.WG-Fit.com

A video posted by Dave Hedges (@dave_hedges) on Jul 26, 2015 at 12:08pm PDT

Take time to watch the short clip through a few times, and then when you try it for yourself keep the movement well below your current limits.

Mobility is best built slowly and gradually. With this sort of training little and often is the surest way to succeed. So I highly recommend adding this to your warm ups for a period of a few weeks so that you hit it every time you hit the gym.

In a few weeks you should see significant improvements and then you you can dial it back while adding in something new.

If you are severely restricted in this, or any other area of movement, you really ought to be getting a deeper assessment done to figure out why your body doesn’t like to move.

You can do that here:

AiM Postural Assessment & Correction

Regards

Dave Hedges www.WG-Fit.com

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#martialarts #functionalmovement #Hipopening #MondayMobility #Movement