The Simple Stretch That Makes You Stronger

The Simple Stretch That Makes You Stronger
Your chair time is hindering your strength gains at the gym. From your commute to your desk job to your time parked in front of the plasma, all this sitting has caused your hip flexors—the group of muscles on the front of your hips—to get extremely tight, explains Sean De Wispelaere, a trainer for Men's Health Thrive in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Inflexible hip flexors decrease your flexibility in exercises like the squat, reducing the amount of weight you can lift and increasing your risk of injury, he says. Combat the tightness with a hip flexor stretch before your leg workout. Just make sure you're doing it the right way to get the most benefit. "If you just kneel there and lean into your hip, you won't get much out of it," says De Wispelaere. "Make it active to make a change." Here's how to do it: Pull your front heel and back knee toward one another. This recruits hard-to-reach hip muscles like the psoas and iliopsoas so you get a deeper stretch. Next, reach your arm overhead to engage the hip flexors vertically. Hold the stretch for 5 to 10 breaths, and then switch sides. "It shouldn't be easy," says De Wispelaere, who gives step-by-step instruction on how to perform the active stretch in the video above. "You have to work to feel the stretch." Original article and pictures take http://www.menshealth.com/fitness/active-hip-flexor-stretch site