Whether you are dancing tango, doing yoga, or just walking and taking part in your daily life, you need healthy hips. Let’s look at how the hip moves, what issues affect it, and how YOU can enrich your understanding of how you need your hips to move to balance flexibility and strength for lifelong mobility.
Hip joint structure
Most of us will touch the outer edge of our pelvis when we think about our “hips” instead of focusing on the joint that connects the leg and the pelvis. To feel that spot, flex your leg up towards your body, and put your fingers into the crease that creates. Your hip joint, or femoral joint, lies only a short distance from your midline.
The shape of your femur and your pelvic bones affects the shape of your hip joint. Also, the ring of fibrocartilage (labrum) that helps hold the femur in place, can vary in shape, making the depth of the joint different. There are three big ligaments that hold the joint together as well. On top of that, the angle of the head of the femur, compared to the shaft, varies as well. This will affect how much you can move your leg laterally out to the side (abduct). It also affects how much you can rotate your leg in the hip socket.
How does this affect you? All exercises that increase the range of motion at the hip are limited by the shape of your body parts: there is no “right” visual shape, so you need to learn what the “right” shape is for you by becoming more aware of your own body, building your proprioception. Learn about YOUR body, map how it can move, and then make sure you are using your hip correctly: don’t just depend on your teacher!
Ways we can move at the hip joint
You don’t need to remember the names for each way you can move the hip but go through these and move your body. Feel what is possible at the hip joint.
Flex: make the angle smaller between the front of the leg and the front of the hip (pulling the leg into the body, or folding forward over the leg)
Extend: Make the angle between the front of the leg and the front of the hip larger (reaching back with our leg)
Outward rotation: Turning the front of the leg open towards the outside edge of the body (think ballet, turnout)
Inward rotation: Turning the front of the leg in towards the midline (think of how some kids sit with their knees together and their feet out next to their hips—I can’t do this :-) )
Abduction: Bringing the leg out from the midline to the side (think of standing with a stretchy band on your legs and then standing on one leg and pulling the other leg away to tighten the stretchy band)
Adduction: Bringing the leg in towards (or past) the midline, across the body (tango people: the cruzada does this)
That’s a lot of different movements at one place! When you add the idea that most motion combines at least two of these ideas, you can see why the hip joint is so complex. Plus, you can’t walk or sit or jump without it: you NEED this joint to work well! A terrific book that can serve as a reference for you: Anatomy of Movement by Blandine Calais-Germain. The book has clear drawings, basic information and easy to understand descriptions. I use it to teach and I recommend it as an informative book to own.
This is NOT at the hip joint!
Many people move at the lower back when I cue movement at the hip joint. A lot of us think arching our back or tucking our pelvis under, is the same as moving at the hip. This is a main reason I teach yoga classes to find the hip and lower back and to build body awareness. Many people (often women in heels) complain to me that tango hurts their body, and I can see that they are trying to hold/stretch in the lower back instead of balancing at the hip joint—that’s much harder on the body!
Tight jaw, tight hips
If you have tight hips, check out your jaw health! I know that sounds crazy, but the two are very linked in the body. As the fetus develops, the jaw/mouth area and the pelvic area are the opposite ends of the digestive system, of the spinal system, etc. Chains of fascia connect the two: if one is tight, it affects the other section of the body (this is a gross simplification: if you wish, go down this rabbit hole on the internet).
Try releasing your jaw, mouth, and lips as you stretch your hips, and see if it works for you. If you are feeling tense in your jaw from stress, try some hip stretches and see what happens! I only found out about this a few months ago, and I find it extremely useful for my own body.
To get more flexible
Many people spend hours per day sitting in chairs and getting tight hips. Remember all the ways that the hip joint can move? One stretch won’t fix your flexibility issues. I use a set of four stretches per leg, 2-3 minutes per stretch (so about 20 minutes of stretching) that I call the pretzel. I stole this from Rita Honka, my West African dance teacher (thanks, Rita!). It stretches the front, back, lateral, and central sides of the joint. For many people, one or two or even three sides of your hip joint are flexible enough to function. By stretching in this “pretzel” you can discover which parts are easy and which are challenging and then only focus on the challenging parts to save time. This video shows the four stretches.
If you are a person who has tight hips, I recommend yoga to untangle your lower back and hip joints. Doing a little yoga every day will help you develop more long-term mobility and flexibility and strength and balance: what’s not to like?
Hypermobility: balancing flexibility with strength
For those of us who are hypermobile, we need to strengthen our hip joints, upper thighs, pelvic floor, and lower back, rather than stretch further. It took me years of injuries to understand that I need to hug my muscles into my bones to support my joints. Someone like me has more passive flexibility than I can use given my muscle strength. If you are hypermobile, you MUST learn your own body map and protect your joints because many teachers do not understand hypermobility and don’t teach to this flip side of not-flexible-enough.
I keep learning
I am learning a lot about building body maps from teaching my yoga class. We range from hyper-flexible to very tight bodies—and everything in the middle. I love that everyone feels they can ask questions, try different modifications, and find what works for them. That’s why I am keeping my class small right now: no big class can provide that level of focus on the individual. My goal is to have people learn enough about their bodies that they can join bigger classes in dance and yoga and continue moving in their optimal way.