The Hip Flexors you Didn't know about

First and foremost, what are your hip flexors and what are their purpose?

Hip flexors are a group of muscles that flex your hip.

Of course! Hip flexors, flex… What that means is that these particular muscles help bring your knee closer to your chest when activated and are used in nearly everything we do!

Most people are typically “hip flexor dominant”. This means that they are often times over used and become “tight”. This tightness can lead to knee, hip, and back pain. Therefore, if you squat, run, sit, or pretty much do anything, you’re likely to find one of these areas (knee, hips, low back) rather stiff and in pain.

Most often times, when the thought of hip flexors are mentioned, people think about the quads, the group of muscles above your knee. This is one of many of the muscles attributed to the group known as the “hip flexors”. These are a large, powerful group of fascia, but we’re looking for the lesser known that may have a bigger impact on the hips and back.

These would be the psoas and iliacus.

Iliacus

I mention both because they “join” together to form the iliopsoas. In this article, I would like to focus primarily on the iliacus. If you’re interested in learning more about it’s counterpart, here’s the psoas.

I call these the hidden hip flexors due to their lack of focus by most people.

The primary function of the iliacus, as it attaches to the top of the iliac crest and to the top of the trochanter of the femur, is to help aid in hip flexion and rotation. It serves a purpose to help hold proper posture of the pelvis, yet is never thought about to be “trained”.

It’s difficult to isolate this muscle group, but because it is a postural muscle, it’s constantly working and since it's constantly putting in overtime, it's time we learn to take care of it.

With this being the case, check out the video below to better provide your deep hip flexors with a little TLC!