Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve written 4 articles to flesh out the introducing hip mobility and lumbar stability post that I did a little while ago.
At the start, I outlined how I had allowed my desk job to cause my posture to deteriorate such that I developed an overly excessive lumbar lordosis and an accompanying anterior pelvic tilt. I explained that I was going to attack this problem with several different techniques, including:
What I haven’t done yet is to set out the programme that I’ve been following that involves all of these techniques.
My hip mobility programme
This is the programme I am doing at the moment. It is by necessity slightly shorter than I would like but there are only so many hours in the day. If I catch myself lying on the sofa for more than a few minutes in an evening, I will often get up and do an impromptu mobility session. But it’s rare that this happens…
Every morning
- roll psoas major with baseball
- roll quads with foam roller
- roll adductors will foam roller
- roll tensor fascia latae with foam roller
What tends to happen here is that I grab both the baseball and the foam roller and lie down on the carpet. I use the baseball on the psoas major for a bit and then switch to the foam roller to do my quads. After that, I will generally do the adductors and the tensor fasciae latae on the same leg before swapping legs. It just seems to be more efficient that way.
I will usually count the number of rolls back and forth rather than counting seconds and I try for around 10 good rolls per exercise, which probably takes around 30 seconds.
- lunge stretch
- standing lunge stretch
- groin stretches
Once I’ve rolled, I go on to stretching. I always do soft tissue work before I stretch. The sports massage therapists that I have worked with in the past advised this. I understand that the reason is that it is better to stretch a muscle once it has had the knots removed rather than trying to stretch a knotted muscle. I would like to spend longer stretching but this is where my time starts to get short.
At the moment, I am only doing each stretch once on each leg for 30 seconds each. Ideally, I would prefer to do each stretch 3 times.
- Plate squats
I outlined a number of activation drills for the glutes and the abs but I also mentioned that I don’t tend to do many any more. This is mostly because I do quite a lot of glute and ab strengthening work in my programmes. I do, however, really like the way the plate squat feels. My whole posterior chain seems to work more efficiently after doing this drill.
I usually just grab a plate as I get up from the stretches and do 5 reps going as low as I can without tucking my lower back. As you might have guessed from my reference to carpet earlier in the article, I do this programme in my bedroom before getting in the shower in the morning. So there is a mirror I can use to check my form.
- Weighted pistols
- Weighted glute bridges
- Weighted hanging leg raises
I have incorporated the above strengthening exercises into my regular workouts. The weighted pistols are reportedly one of the best exercises for working the glutes and I definitely feel the weighted glute bridges in the right place! Weighted hanging leg raises are the only specific abdominal exercise that I really feel in my abs (I do feel my abs after picking up a sandbag but that’s another matter). You can see how I do these exercises in my workouts posts (and they tend to vary from month to month) but at the moment I am doing:
- Weighted pistols – 10 sets of 3 reps on 1:30mins with 25kg
- Weighted glute bridges - 10 sets of 4 reps on 1:00min with 50kg
- Weighted hanging leg raises – 10 sets of 3 reps on 1:00min with 2kg
Well, that’s what I’m doing at the moment. I’m going to start assessing my improvement soon and I’ll let you know how it goes!
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