Hip Tightness or Hip Pain? Try a Foam Roller

Do you have hip tightness? Tight buttocks or hip flexors? Hip Pain? Try using a foam roller to help alleviate tightness and resolve pain.

Hi this is Dana Ranahan from Body Works Sports Physiotherapy in North Vancouver and today we’re going to do some foam roller work to help you release tightness around the hips.

Hip tightness and pain can come from a lot of activities. It’s an area we tend to grip posturally – sometimes at work, or especially with runners who tend to get a lot of tightness in the lateral hips. Often we get tightness in the buttock area, the lateral hip, and into our hip flexors in the front.

Positioning

  • First off, I get you to sit on the roller
  • Square yourself in the beginning to get a sense of it
  • If I’m going to work on my right side, I’m then going to turn to the right and put my buttocks on the side of the roller, and this leg is going to help me control my movement.
  • In this case, I’m going to roll the roller back and forth along the glute, the gluteus muscle and the piriformis muscle, and it will help release tightness.

Sometimes you find an area that is specifically tight or really sensitive, and rolling over it will not help it release. In those cases, it’s best to sit on it, let it relax for a minute, and you can visualize melting or releasing in that area before getting back to rolling.

Rolling

  • Start with rolling through the hip at the back side, and you can do it for 15, 20, or 30 seconds, depending on how you feel.
  • Go until you feel like it’s moving better and then change your angle a little bit to get different parts of the buttock.
  • Now we’re going to work on the side of the hip to get your tensor fasciae latae.
  • In this position, I cross over to help get on the side of my hip, and I can get into the side muscle of the hip to help release it. This is a really nice one.

Last but not least, we come onto the front and we can work into the front of the hip rolling back and forth, face down and using this leg to stabilize rolling back and forth.

Those are some simple techniques that you can try with the foam roller to help release hip tightness. If you’re going to do it, I suggest you do both sides. It’ll only take you a few minutes, so give it a try. You can also check out our other videos for hip release.