Hip Extension For Better Walking And Moving

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For better ease and control of your walking gait, you need a certain amount of hip extension. One great exercise to work on our hip extension is a lunge. However, like in all exercises, sometimes the sticky/tense parts of our body pull on the other parts and we get the illusion that we're moving one thing, but we're moving another part of the body entirely. In other words, unless we pay attention to our alignment, we may not be moving what we think we're moving. In the lunge, you shift your hips forward toward your front foot in order to extend/stretch the back leg. However, the tension in the hip flexors can pull on the pelvis causing it to tilt forward (anterior tilt) so that the thigh does not actually extend back from the pelvis but rather keeps the same relationship to the pelvis while that anterior tilt results in a extension of the lower back. Moreover, the psoas muscle's resistance to stretching can pull on the ribcage thrusting it forward causing a further extension (or shear) of the lower back. Therefore, the lunge in this cage will not help your hip extension but may result in lower back strain. The correction for this is to maintain a fixed, vertical, neutral pelvis and to maintain the ribs down and neutral to the pelvis as well. try to keep the upper torso vertical over the hips and then as you shift forward, you will experience more movement and stretch of the back thigh/hip flexors. This is one great example of the principle that in order to stretch a muscle, one end of the muscle needs to stay fixed and stable as you move the other end away from it.