The "Hip Tuck."
By Coach LeighAnn
The “Hip Tuck.” A crucial form cue in almost every movement we do, including day-to-day life. The ability to align our hips correctly will help us to use correct muscles and to eliminate back pain. We use the tuck in a plank, a squat, a deadlift, a hinge, and all of the exercises that build from those (we use a plank in our burpee for example). But we have to master getting into this position first.
Many people will find this position difficult to get into because we spend our days sitting. Whether at a desk at work or in school, in front of the TV, eating dinner with our families, we spend a lot of time bending and coming out of a normal human upright position. After a few years of doing this every single day, it can take a toll on the way your body operates while moving and while standing still. We all know that sitting at a desk is tough on our shoulders and spine, and can lead to a lot of tightness and imbalance there, but how does it also affect our hips? Sitting at a desk all day keeps our hip flexors in a contracted/shortened position all day. The hip flexors tend to tighten because they are in this shortened position for so long. When you stand up, they can pull the front of your pelvis down, causing you to end up with an anterior pelvic tilt. This tilt causes your spine to arch and puts a lot of pressure on your back, even when standing. When you then try to exercise on top of that and you are already out of alignment, the pain tends to get worse.
Of course making sure that we foam roll and stretch our hip flexors before a workout will help to alleviate some of this pain. It will also make it easier to get into and maintain the hip tuck.
We first have to learn what the tuck motion is. The easiest way to do this is by getting into a quadruped position (on all fours). In yoga, they call it Cat Cow, moving from an arched spine to a rounded spine. The transition utilizes the hip tuck. You start in Cow with your back arched. To get to Cat we tuck the hips under and start to lift the back up. The trick is to make sure that we stop moving once the spine is neutral and don’t move all the way into Cat.
Give the Hip Tuck a shot and check out my video for more info!
Published on: Jun 2, 2017
