Hip-Flexors and Speed
Help, my hip-flexors are weak!
Solving a problem in training and in life begins based on what we believe. Our beliefs are our foundation for our thoughts. Based on what we believe, we decide on a possible solution. If your foundation is off track, then every solution that grows from it will also be off. For a lot of athletes and coaches in the US and the world, strength training is the foundation. When an athlete/human isn’t performing well or gets injured the solution revolves around strength. I believe thinking this way is limiting. I think it’s detrimental to the client’s short-term and long- term health.
Recently, I met with an aspiring athlete. He has played American football and basketball his whole life. He wants to run faster and to jump higher, and he believes in order to do it he must get stronger. He believes speed is best achieved by doing more weighted exercises in the gym. In this case he is using bands to provide the added resistance while he practices his running stride. The picture for this blog reflects what this exercise looks like. It’s another version of band walks that general population clients and athlete clients do in most mainstream gyms. You can find countless examples on YouTube and Instagram. These are popular and very trendy. The belief is people run slower than they’d like because they aren’t strong enough to run faster. I have seen young basketball players using bands in the same manner to train their jump. The belief there is that if they become stronger, they will jump higher.
The athlete I was working with was also experiencing pain in his hips and lower back. The pain was increasing as his program progressed and he felt faster. When I asked him his thoughts on his program, he replied that he is getting better. My question, how can you be getting better if the pain is getting worse? This is short-term thinking. This is immediate gratification. You can be getting better in the short-term and be hurting yourself in the long-term. My philosophy is let’s find a way to get better in the short-term, get better in the long-term, AND stay healthy doing it. There might be exceptions to that at the elite level where there are millions of dollars at stake, but they should be exceptions! Even for the elite athlete.
In conclusion, I don’t believe this athlete had weak hip flexors. I believe he had overly strong/tight hip-flexors compared to the rest of his body. I believe he could change a lot about how he trains, but it doesn’t matter what I think, it only matters what he thinks. If you are an average person searching on the internet how to train you would find a plethora of information. You’d be inundated with options, and it would be mostly crap. It would be crap because none of these images/videos have a clue about you and your body. On top of that, they would assume that all of your problems can be solved by just one type of training.
The challenge is how would you even know that? Ask questions. Don’t assume things are true just because they come from a shiny website or appear in the top of your search engine. Record your training and what happens to your body. By asking questions and recording what happens you will be able to discern what’s true and what is not. This is your chance to become more connected to your body, make better decisions for you, and get better results.