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How to Fix a Tight Psoas Muscle (Hip Flexor) Fast!
- chelsie462
- 15 hours ago
- 7 min read
This article is a transcribed, edited summary of a video Bob and Brad recorded in October 2024. For the original video, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8_teUeUDj0&t=10s
Mike: Now, what are we talking about today, Brad?
Brad: What we're talking about today is this muscle deep in the stomach, right along the pelvis, that connects to the lower back and the hip.
Brad: And the pronunciation of this muscle it's very critical that you know how to pronounce it. We're going to take a step back a few years, and Bob and I address this specifically. Take 30 seconds, and here we go.
Bob: Psoas.
Brad: Psoas muscle. Now, I have heard a professional pronounce it as "pso-ass". And I'm not exaggerating. We'll have none of that kind of pronunciation on the show.
Bob: We're a family show!
Brad: It is a family show. Delete that. We will not say that.
Mike: So now that we've got that all cleared up on how to pronounce psoas. Did I say it right?
Brad: No, psoas.
Mike: Psoas.
Brad: It's the psoas. This is a family show.
Mike: Family show. Anyway, we're going to go back in time again to show you a stretch that we highly recommend to stretch this muscle out, and then we'll come back to show you a new alternative.
Brad: Right. Now, Bob is helping with this one. Again, it's not only the stretch of the psoas muscle, but the opposite muscle, the glute, and how they work together. Very simple, very short. It takes about 60 seconds. Here we go again, Mike. Whoa!
Mike: This time travel's making me sick!
Brad: What we want is reciprocal inhibition to help relax the psoas muscle, so we're going to contract the gluteus maximus. And the way to do that, Bob's already in position. It's simply lying like this; he's going to bridge. And right now he's contracting the glute max.
Bob: So, stretching the hip flexor.
Brad: At the same time, yeah!
Bob: Right.
Brad: Exactly. So we're going to work that, 10 repetitions. If you feel like that's getting too easy and you want to actually get more firing of the glute max, you can go on one leg. Now he's going to work the right side only, and he's going to work it like that. You can take this hand and actually grab your glute maximus and feel it. Feel it contract. You get some biofeedback that way.
Bob: A little strange.
Brad: Yeah, well, just don't do it with people around in the gym, you know what I'm saying? But you can do it. Yes.
Bob: Spank myself.
Brad: Why, Bob, why? It's a family show.
Mike: And now we're back to the current time.
Brad: So! Very good. Bob did an excellent job of demonstrating an excellent technique. How to stretch the psoas. We're going to show you another one that's going to work more for other people. It's a little more aggressive, and it really works well. You will need to have a table or a bed like Sam is doing, and we'll show you exactly how this stretches a muscle using our model of the green muscle of the psoas. Did you know where the name psoas comes from?
Mike: Yeah, it comes from Greek, because you wrote it on the board and I read it.
Brad: That's right. Yeah. And what does it mean?
Mike: It means the muscle of the loin!
Brad: Right. It might be Latin or Greek. One way or another, it means the muscle of the loin, and that's what we have here. So watch. This muscle is a tight muscle. You can see it's loose here, but as we start to extend the hip, it's getting tight. Now, if you had a muscle this tight, and some people do when their knee gets to here, it takes a bit to stretch. And you can see, as we work with it, it stretches and stretches and stretches, and we do want to have it so we can get down to this level of range of motion. So a tight muscle can be stretched. It's not going to stretch this fast as we have here, but it will stretch with time.
Brad: Now we're going to demonstrate to you with a real human being instead of Sam. Thank you for your work, and we appreciate it.
Mike: He was once real.
Brad: No, this is a plastic skeleton.
Mike: Okay, so in order to do this stretch, you're going to need to sit on a firm surface of sorts. I personally do this on my bed, but your butt does kind of sag off the end. So be wary of that. You can do it on a countertop or table if you are comfortable. So to begin, sit on the edge, and I'm going to bring both knees up to my chest. The closer my butt is to the edge, the more stretch I will be feeling. Now I'm going to stretch my left leg just for camera purposes. It's closer. So I'm going to drop this leg down as we showed on the skeleton. Then I'm going to bend my knee. Now you see here, oh, I have good mobility. What we didn't show on the skeleton is you take your other knee, bring it up to your chest, and now you can see how your hip flexors are actually tighter pulling. So try to keep it down and stretch like this. You do need a somewhat high surface to sit on, because as you can see, my feet are almost touching the ground here.
Brad: Right. And a couple of little things to mention are, do not let your knee drift off to the side or lateral or medial. But most people go out to the side. Keep it there.
Brad: And now there may be some therapists watching or some kinesiologists who are going to say, "Well, when you bend the knee, that doesn't affect the psoas muscle," which is true. That does rectus femoris, which is also important with the hip flexor. So that's why we wanted to make sure we added this. This is from Rick Olderman. He uses this for treatment for anterior pelvic tilt, with which he had great success, with back pain as well as sciatica, and as well as hip pain. So it's an all-in-one exercise. We really wanted to show you this so that we are complete.
Mike: Once you do one side, reset here and drop the other leg down; you may notice one side is tighter than the other. You can hold this for 30 seconds if you feel comfortable. You can go up to a minute if you want; it's not going to hurt anything, as long as it's not increasing pain anywhere. Again, do two to three sets per side. If one side's tighter, just do an extra set on that side. When I do this side, I get a little bit of cramping in my hamstring here, so I'm not quite as aggressive. Now, some people, if you're really tight, your hip flexor may be way up here when you drop down. So just try to hang out here as comfortably as you can. If you need to, back up a little bit for beginners, if you're this high up. And then once you can kind of get neutral, that's when you want to start scooting your butt closer to the edge to get into extension.
Brad: I believe I covered that with Sam.
Mike: Well, I re-covered it in real life.
Brad: No, actually, I'm glad you did it, because it does make more sense. Just make sure you're not wearing too tight pants. Something stretchy or shorts gives you more mobility. Mike came today with his jeans on.
Mike: They're stretchy pants!
Brad: Oh, they are?
Mike: Yeah.
Brad: If they're stretchy, it's all right then. All right, very good. So now that we have completely covered hip flexor stretching with everything that we can throw at you with our incredible knowledge from Rick and more, what do you have to say? Oh, we have another video to look at!
Mike: Yes. If you want to check another video on how to solve this issue, watch "How to Fix a Tight Psoas Muscle in 30 seconds (The easy way)."
Brad: I thought there was a second video.
Mike: Oh, there are two videos. The other one is "Unlock Hip Flexor Tightness & Pain in 90 Seconds! In Bed."
Brad: Just go on YouTube, Bob and Brad, you will find more videos as well.
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