The saying to keep it simple silly holds, but when it comes to fixing tight hip flexors pain, you have to understand why you should not stretch something that feels tight. A tight muscle should only be stretched out when you had a prolonged event that required you to not use that muscle(s). A case where stretching of a tight muscle is appropriate is during the rehabilitation of a body part that has been cast or splinted.
When muscles are have been cast or splinted, there is shortening the basic contractile unit of muscle fiber called sarcomeres. This effect impacts your ability to produce power and strength. The shorter the sarcomeres, the more difficult it will be to get good contraction of a muscle. When you perform static stretching of a muscle, you lengthened the sarcomeres.
This article will point out the case that your tight hip flexors are not due to a sarcomere and muscle fiber issue. But before we dive into the 3 common reasons for having a tight hip flexor, we will point out what a tight hip flexor muscle can do to your body. A tight hip flexor muscle will result in a compensated pelvis to be rotated anteriorly, thus resulting in one side of the pelvis to be in an exaggerated lumbar lordosis, pubic bone to be positioned more forward and down, and tailbone (coccyx bone) to be tipped up and back. Imagine a teapot with the spout placed down (like the pubic bone) to serve tea. The handle is the position of the coccyx. Every bone and joints that are associated with this posture adapts and will be malpositioned, accordingly.
The list of common local complaints is included below.
- Lower back pain.
- Feeling like you have one leg shorter than the other leg.
- Sacroiliac joint pain or dysfunction.
- Groin pain or femoral-acetabular impingement.
- Sciatica nerve pain.