This Motion is Key to Great Feeling Hips & Back

If you have been following our recent newsletters, we have been sharing strategies to help your hips move and feel better. 

In this issue, we will discuss a key to keeping the ideal motion of your hips during everyday activities as well as during exercise.  Bonus to the concept we will discuss today it is also key for the health of your spine.

In the picture below Dr. Osar is demonstrating an optimal hip hinge. 

Keys to a hip hinge:

• The motion happens in the hip joint (where Dr. Osar's hands are placed)
• Your head, trunk, spine, and pelvis move together as one.
• It is ok to have a slight knee bend
• 

In the picture above Dr. Osar is showing us a suboptimal hip hinge.  You can see the moton is occurring at the low back and neck.  If you look at the difference between the glutes in the two pictures notice the glutes in the top photo are in alignment with the rest of the body and in the lower picture the glutes are almost pointing down toward the floor.

The hip hinge is so important to the health of our hips and spine.  When we can move our bodies through this motion in an optimal fashion it put the load in our bodies through the biggest muscles and the joints best equipped for the load.

An optimal hip hinge movement helps with squatting, sitting, picking items up, and putting them down.

If you have tight glutes or tight back muscles it may be challenging to execute this exercise optimally.  

In our next installment, we will look at the best way to execute common lower body exercises and you will see why the hip hinge is so important.

If you have questions about this newsletter be sure to reach out.  If you know of someone who may benefit from the information we share, please be sure to forward it to them.