![]() ![]() In a couch stretch, in particular because you aren't grabbing the foot of the leg you are stretching, it's relatively easy to not think about stabilizing the shin against rotation. Why you might want to stabilize your shin against rotation when doing the couch stretch ![]() They can also help move the hip bone, or stabilize it. These muscles can thus rotate the shin or stabilize it against rotation. They also attach to the prominent corner points of the hip bone. Note that all of these muscles attach to the inside or the outside of the lower leg. Semimembranosus, another hamstring muscle, may also help with shin rotation. Meanwhile, running along the iner thigh, the gracilis and the semitendinosus, both attach along with the sartorius to the inside of the tibia. The biceps femoris (both the short head and the long head) attaches to the fibula, the bone that runs along the outside of the tibia. Along the outside of the thigh the superficial fibers of the gluteus maximus attach via the IT band to the outside of the tibia. ![]() There are other hip muscles that can activate to rotate the shins. Note that when the knee is straight and the torso is upright, the tensor fascia latae can act to rotate the leg internally. Meanwhile, the sartorius can rotate the shin internally. The tensor fascia latae can help to rotate the shin externally. Muscles that rotate the shinsĪ key point is that when the knee is bent the lower leg bones can rotate relative to the femur. Here I'm using my sartorius to flex the lifted leg hip. The rectus femoris attaches to the knee cap (and from there to the front of the tibia.).The sartorius attaches to the inside of the tibia.The tensor fascia latae attaches via the IT band to the outside of the tibia.These three hip flexors also cross the knee joint. All three of these muscles attach at or near the ASICs, the pointy bone at the front of each hip bone. Other hip flexors include the tensor fascia latae, the sartorius and the rectus femoris. Generally when talking about hip flexors the muscles that may come to a lot of people's minds are the psoas and illiacus. So which hip flexors does this couch stretch actually stretch? And that's a good thing when stretching your hip flexors. This puts adds tension to the front of the abdomen which in turn tends to cause an upwards pull on the fronts of your hip bones, particularly your ASICs but also your pubic bone. The idea in doing this is to lengthen the front of your abdomen. But prior to talking about that, one simple thing that you can do to make this stretch (and possibly quite a few other stretches) more effective is to lift your chest away from the fronts of your hip bones. Now there are a few "activations" that you can experiment with and that you may find makes it easier to sink the hips down (without having to wait quite so long). ![]() Why you should lift your chest when doing the couch stretch This was the second variation of the stretch. Personally, I thought that from here going down onto one elbow would be easier. You'll probably feel the stretch most particularly in the front of the thigh of the back leg. In the first variation of the Steven Thomas Hip flexor stretch, the idea is to go into a lunge and grab the back foot with the opposite hand. But first, I'll talk about the hip flexor stretch I learned from Stephen Thomas (the "Steven Thomas Hip Flexor stretch""), plus some another hip flexor/quad stretch (which is similiar to the couch stretch but which I'll call the "Hip Flexor Wall Stretch" because you use a wall). Now I'll get to the Starret stretch in a moment. This hip flexor stretch didn't involve a couch but was quite intense. I encountered a version of this stretch in a yoga class with a guy named Steven Thomas. So the couch stretch may have gotten its name from Kelly Starret, possibly because you can do this stretch using a couch. Couch stretch and other stretches for the hip flexors ![]()
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