🔮 The one area where nearly all of us are limited

Another Episode of The Weekly Dose!

Every week I set out to help educate you on movement practices and principles that will enable you to become a better athlete. Whether you are a high school athlete or a 75-year-old grandparent trying to keep up with your grandkids, this email will have value!

Today I am sharing insight into one of, if not, the biggest movement limitations that I see working with athletes of all ages. It’s something that I am sure you have heard of several times. I hope you enjoy!

Mobility is another hot topic in the fitness industry. Some say it promises longevity and injury prevention, some treat it like a magic potion. Understandably so. It’s great to be mobile, but we should understand where we have deficiencies first.

I’m discussing hip internal rotation today. Here is a simple active test you could perform on yourself to understand where yours is. A great goal would be to have 40 degrees here… yeah, I’m a work in progress!

A better solution would be to elevate your butt. This makes it easier for us to comfortably explore the end range of hip internal rotation instead of cranking up the lower back. Since I really do like what the 90/90 provides this is a modification I like using with a lot of my athletes.

If we want to work on increasing our hip internal rotation here is perhaps the most important thing to understand: We access the most internal rotation when we bias our hips @ a 90 degree position . This is basically a right angle between our thigh and our hip.

When we struggle to even get in this position of 90 degrees of hip flexion without compensation, one exercise we can do is this:  

Another, more dynamic, exercise is one that we have talked about in past emails. A Front Foot Elevated Split Squat. This can be performed with or without weight. Goal with this is to get that front foot elevated so the hip starts in a near 90 degree position. As you lower I want the knee to track in line with the big toe. Example video below is one of several that you can do. I will share more in the weeks to come.

So why should you care about increasing your hip internal rotation?

Well first, if you want to get better at your sport this may be the gateway to improvement that your body needs.

We need hip internal rotation for a multitude of reasons. We need it in our mid stance of gait (running stride) when we transition over one foot to the next, we need it when we want to make a cut on a defender in sports (image below) or when we slide out for a ball (image below) & we also need it to do movements as basic as a squat or deadlift!

Unlocking the internal rotation capabilities at your hip may just be the magic area you need to focus on in your mobility routine.

Continue to work in the exercises that you see above and test (before the drills) and then re-test (after the drills) to see how much change you are making. Soon enough you will see lasting change to get to an optimal range of 40 degrees!

🗣️: If you are looking to take the guesswork out of your training and have athletic goals coming up this year I’d highly recommend my online program, The Foundational Athlete (TFA). This program was built from years of experience keeping concepts like what I have shared today in mind. No matter what sport or how old you are the program holds tremendous value

 RIGHT NOW TFA is being offered with a ONE WEEK FREE TRIAL. If you sign up & aren’t liking what you see just cancel it before the week is over and you won’t be billed. What’s the harm in that? To learn more you can click below! I’d love for you to be a part of the LAD Performance team & hear more about your performance goals this year.

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