A Fast & Effective Functional Hip Movement Assessment for Hip Pain
To watch the full video, click here: https://youtu.be/Px9NVkN0sBM
Hey, what’s up coaches and athletes, Michael Hughes here with Gymnazo Edu, showing you a video on hip movement assessment, how to quickly take an athlete, a client through a movement assessment that really looks at the pelvis, the hips, how they function in upright stance, or an authentic kind of function as they progress through the entire day. What I love about this assessment, and I’m showing you is how quick it is how detailed it is at the same point, it works anywhere, you don’t need any special tools or any special facility to make this happen. So why am I bringing this up? Well, as a trainer, you’re gonna go through a lot of times where your athlete, your client just can’t do what you want to do. And you have to be able to quickly assess why why that’s happening. We certainly know what right the what is very simple, their lower back hurts, their knee hurts or the cases. That’s, that’s easy, they can tell you that the human body tells us that very easily. But why is it there? And how can we as a movement professional, understand, where’s it coming from, so we can best address our client or athlete to give them the ultimate success versus just band aiding an approach and hope it works. We firmly believe that as a functional movement specialist, we personal trainers should be able to manage movement, dysfunction, or what we call an MSD, multi muscular skeletal disorders excuse me, and we can take care of those things, we shouldn’t have to refer out in the moment, we should be able to address, assess, and figure out how to provide successful strategies and techniques as our client or athlete needs be. So here’s what I want you to do, go and stand up with me if you’re if you’re watching, or at least have an idea of what’s happening, because we’re going to put our feet into six different foot positions and drive our pelvis into three different spots. And if you liked this content already for digging in this one, you know, give me a thank you give me a heads up give me a little kind of in a sense, a form of acknowledgement by give me a thumbs up on this video would really appreciate it. So it shows out to more content. And also, if you want to subscribe and hit the notification bell because we put content out once per week that has this kind of different approach to training and conditioning that we believe the industry needs to know. So with that being said, right foot in front of left with a right foot in front of left foot position, what we have is one hip that’s in more flexion and one hip that’s in more extension, I’ll kind of turn that one this hips in more flexion and this hip symptom more extension in the sagittal plane. So by biasing it us in that position, we can now drive our pelvis in three planes of motion to find out which pattern may cause more discomfort or not have the movement that we want to have. So with hands on hips as using this as a little bit of a setup here, we can drive our pelvis forward and drive our pelvis backwards. Now what do we do when we get when we do that? Well, we get much more extension and our back foot. And when we go backwards, we get much more flexion. So what are we assessing? Well, when we pre load our feet by putting in this position, we’re pre loading our anterior hip, and our anterior chain of our of our thigh and our hip. And we’re pre loading the posterior chain of our front leg and my case my right leg. So when I go into slight hip forward translation, I’m already putting this under more tension. And let’s say my lower back says, Oh, I don’t like that. We know that our left anterior chain quadricep hip flexor, abdominal chain is saying I can’t manage that tension. Same thing is true and I push my pelvis backwards. And I get some lower back pain on the backwards point as an example, that we know that our calf or it’s or more specifically, our hamstring glute in the sagittal plane can’t manage that loading tension. And if therefore pulling on the lower back. So does that make it pretty simple to find out? Does it hurt going forward? Does it hurt going backwards? Do you feel the discomfort forward? Do you feel this comfort going backwards? Well, let’s just say there is no dis discomfort, it’s still a good move and assessment because you go to the opposite side. And you say is this is this pattern is this translation of the pelvis equal to this side. And you as a careful observer, as a movement practitioner can be able to see or at least measure with your own eyes, how that feels and how that goes. So that’s a really quick way to just observe in the sagittal plane where you can get into more detail. In the same point we can put our feet wide and take our pelvis through lateral translation and we can put our feet take our feet narrow and take our hips through lateral translation. What are we assessing? Well, in the purest sense when we go wide and we take our pelvis through a lateral translation, we’re gonna So as quickly the adductors, or the medial chain of our lower body, as it as we may get, let’s say, lower back or knee pain sliding left and right, well, we say, well, what tissue is going under greater loading or tension, we’re going to slide to my left. That simple. That’s my right adductors has quite a few of them in there. So it can’t just say which one, we don’t know which one but it doesn’t really matter. You can start to surf and search, just knowing that simple information, or going this way, we know that it can be on this side, when I go narrow. And I push my hips left, right, well, what muscles are essentially Am I assessing was certainly going after the from the bottom up the IT band, which is definitely much more of attendant than than anything else, going after my TfL going after my glute medius. Right, those are some primary ones that are definitely being lengthened in the from the thigh or knee above to the pelvis. And if that starts to pull on and say lower back pain or knee pain, we certainly know what muscles aren’t going under loading, and therefore bullying the joint or below or the joint joints above. So again, very simple way to start saying, Well, how do I treat those? Well, simple ways to start treating those, as a soft tissue healthy enough is hydrated enough, well, can foam roller or soft tissue help with that? Can those muscles stretch and therefore go through lengthening more? Well, they obviously can’t go through lengthen if it hurts, but is there another position that it can go in? To help that out, I’m gonna cover that in a little bit, because that’s kind of the closing detail of this video. Let’s go the transverse plane. Well, if I go externally pre positioned rotation, hands on hips, rotate to the right, rotate to the left, when I pre position an external rotation, if I rotate to the right, I’m going undergoing more lengthening through my medial chain my meter rotational chain much sooner, much, much faster. If I get lower back pain spinning to my right, when I’m pre positioned toe open, hmm, maybe something’s going on in this medial chain. If I go the opposite way, same thing happens, I get pain going to when I spend my pelvis to the left, I wonder if there’s a medial chain problem, a aberrant tension too much tension in that connective tissue, that’s therefore inhibiting my motion going to my left, therefore cause my my lower back to over move, therefore causing discomfort. Or if I go to open, what’d I just do? We pre positioned our hips in internal rotation. What musculature connective tissue in the posterior chain, therefore went under pre tensioning? Well, it’s definitely going to be the glute Maximus, some, even the smaller glutes, definitely the hamstring, essentially, the lateral or the outside, are going to go under pre tensioning. So now if I rotate to the right, and rotate to the left, if I rotate to the right, I know my right side went under even more rotational tension. And if that causes lower back pain or knee pain, I certainly have some muscles that I can start to focus on. And then the same is true going to the left, left glutes, definitely left lateral hamstring, going under a lot more tensioning, causing lower back or knee pain. Again, the point of this is too simple, six different foot positions, the why behind each one of those from all three planes of motion, sagittal, frontal and transverse, and all the major hip muscles essentially that control lower back pain or control knee pain, that if they’re too, too dense, they’re not going to allow movement effectively or efficiently. Okay, so what do we do about these particular things? What, how do we kind of manage these these things. So let’s go back to the starting position, right foot in front of left if we know anterior hurts, we know the left front thigh is going to be a primary suspect or left anterior chain. So what I want you to do is go as far forward as you can before you feel discomfort in the low back or in the knee. Hold stay in that pre positioned forward slot I’m gonna go from lateral view, stay for so don’t go into pain back out, it’s like playing the game operation. Remember that little game the board game, you had to pick the little bones out of the out of the body if you hit the side, go. Right. So don’t go that far. When you feel discomfort in the lower back or the knee sliding forward and goes, you’ve gone too far back out just a few millimeters before that discomfort starts to happen. Then from there, you’re going to drive your pelvis in the other two planes possible.
This would be the frontal plane I’ve already pre positioned myself in the sagittal plane. I’m going to drive in the frontal plane and the drive and the rotational or the transverse plane. What you’re doing is you’re loosening up the connective tissue in the planes of motion that are possible or are achievable or are successful without causing discomfort. So you may say to me Well, what if it hurts when I slide away for it to the to the side? Well the game of all Question still holds true, don’t go that far, just go right to that point and then back off, you’re still moving in the lateral translation or lateral frontal plane, but you’re not going to the point of causing joint or soft tissue discomfort, therefore still providing movement, therefore movement, hydration, movement, stretching. And just neurological reconditioning, then also the same thing is true in the rotational plane. So that’s how you can progress through either a right foot front or left in front is go to the position, let’s say it’s posterior, go to the position of just threshold of comfort, drive in the other two planes of motion. Okay, well, let’s say if it hurts in the frontal plane, well go as far into that frontal plane as you can before dysfunction and then drive in the other two planes of motion possible. That would be anterior posterior. And that would be a right rotation, left rotation, still holding my pre positioned slide. Same thing is true. In the narrow stance here hurts there, back off, no discomfort there hurts here, but not here hurts there, but not not there, hold right there, drive in the anterior posterior in that range of motion that is successful. Backing off just before discomfort, and then rotational there, whatever hurts in the transverse plane, go into this much rotation as you can before discomfort. Now holding that position driving forward and backwards, driving side to side or in the sagittal plane, or in the frontal plane, same thing to open, go into as much rotation, internal rotation as you can before, to discomfort that hold that position, drive in the frontal plane, drive in, sorry, in the sagittal plane drive in the frontal plane. Why does this work? Well, this is simply just a physics lesson. If you’ve been camping before, if you’ve tried to do some gardening before, and there’s been a steak stuck in the ground, and you’re trying to pull that steak out, and it doesn’t go, what do you do to free it up, you’re not using external forces besides your own body, you wiggle it, right, you try to move it in the sagittal plane, you try to move it in the frontal plane, you try to move it in the transverse plane to free it up in the possible paths that it can move. Once you do, you’ve moved it up enough, you pull up some more and guess what happens it gives you an edge it gives you a millimeter gives you just a little bit of space. He’s like, Ah, this is working. So if the if the gravel and the ground and the dirt works this way that physics works there. It’s no different physics in this hip is no different. Find success, move in that success. Know the different options that you have to move in what we just covered and move successfully. Not in pain, but in non pain as much as you possibly can. With as many reps before you can retry and gain more progress I guarantee if you have a musculoskeletal dysfunction in the pelvis, or in the hips and in the knee and you use these techniques you will find greater success. If it’s a structural problem, a tear, well probably gonna have limited success relatively speaking, but give this a shot. Again, I’m Michael Hughes Gymnazo Edu super excited to open source what we do in the movement and training world to meet physical therapy and in a sense physical therapeutics and performance training to blend them together. So the coach of tomorrow is someone who can manage multiple, multiple different musculoskeletal dysfunctions in a session so cannot successful so our athletes and clients can can continue with their training and conditioning ultimately continue with their health. And we’re here to make that as as much as seen as all trainers get access in the trainers of the future. So thanks for watching. Appreciate you guys. See you guys next time.
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