Tight Hips Can Wreck Your Back and Hurt Your Surfing
Why should you even care about stretching and mobilizing your hips?!?! Excellent question, so get ready to learn. The dynamics of surfing require that your joints be able to move in extremely large ranges of motion, freely and quickly.
Think about the simple act of a pop-up, to a few down the line pumps, a big roundhouse cut back, a few more pumps, and if you haven’t bonked it at this stage, let’s throw in a floater for good measure.
Every single one of those movements is requiring some pretty extreme flexibility and mobility out of your joints, and especially your hips. So if you want to surf well, and especially pain free, you need to keep your hip joints flexible.
Looser, Freely Moving Joints Will Prevent Injury, and Let You Surf Faster and More Powerfully
Increased Mobility in You Hips Will Potentially Help You With….
- Faster and Smoother Down The Line Pumping
- A Quicker and More Fluid Pop-up
- Increased Hip Range Of Motion with Increase Ease and Speed of Rotation….. TURNS!!
- Less Chance of Knee Injuries and Low Back Pain
- More Freely Moving Hips Will Help You Out In The Bedroom!!
- Take Preventative Steps Combatting Low Back Pain
- You’ll Be Able To Dance Better
Older Surfers and Desk Jockeys—-Â You Have Got To Be Stretching Your Hips!!!
This becomes especially important for any surfers that are starting to get a bit older, OR those surfers that spend a lot of time behind a desk or sitting in a car….. or sitting anywhere for that matter.
Extended periods of sitting will quickly rob you of your flexibility and mobility in your hips. Once you start losing proper movement capability in a joint, your body literally forces more motion into other joints above or below.
If your hips are lacking mobility and range of motion, your body is going to force extra movement into your lumbar spine or knees…. and that will wreck those joints sooner or later!
What You Can Do To Keep Yourself Surfing, and Restore Hip Flexibility
Stretch!!! But not some old school bullshit stretches.
This is 2012!! Let’s get into some quality, joint specific, hip stretches… and throw in some mobilizations for an extra kick. A few really good movements is all you need to start improving hip range of motion.
A few of the muscles you’ll be stretching are the Quadriceps and Rectus Femoris, Hip External Rotators, and your Adductors. These are highly important muscles for those surfers that are sitting at a desk all day, and then hopping into some surf whenever they get the chance.
The muscles you’ll be targeting with these stretches can severely limit the way your hips should move. Just like I said before, if your hips aren’t moving right, you’re setting yourself up for some pain, and definitely some limited surfing.
 SPEND JUST A FEW MINUTES A DAY WORKING ON THESE AND SEE IF YOU FEEL SOME BENEFIT…… HEY, WHO DOESN’T WANT LOOSE HIPS EH’!?!?
Once you’ve improved your mobility in the hip region, you want to make sure you’ve got muscle strength and stability so you can control that newly improved range of motion. Here’s a video and past post on training your hips. These can be highly beneficial exercises and also serve as a great warmup.
Surfing Hip Exercises – How To Train Your Hips
For more insight into how to incorporate flexibility training, as well as strength training, core training, and upper body endurance… Check out my full Training Program, for months of training, flexibility drills, shoulder training, and nutrition. SURF ATHLETE TRAINING PROGRAM
Give these moves a try! I use some variations of these single leg hip movements before every surf.
Post below and leave me some feedback if you get any benefit, or if you know of some other moves you prefer.
Mobilize your hips, surf hard, throw down some killer dance moves, and then surf some more.
-cris
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