Lying Knee to Knee Stretching Exercise

This exercise will increase you hip mobility and in turn increase your stride length.

Lying Knee to Knee Stretching Exercise Hi, this is Eric Cressey with Competitor.com. And this is your Monday Minute. This week, we’re going to talk about another hip mobility drill that you can use to improve hip function and in turn your stride length and reduce your risk of injury. This is called the lying knee to knee stretch. It looks very simple and it is. But it’s also very, very important. We use this a lot in runners who tend to out toe when they run. And also, we see a lot in soccer players, power lifters, and hockey players because they all tend to lack hip internal tissues as well. So the easiest way to tell if you need to do this is one, to simply look at your running mechanics and see if you really out toeing. And two, get down and actually try the exercise and see if you feel a pretty pronounced stretch. We’re going to do set up lying on our back on the ground and set up our feet in the ground and just gradually bring it further and further apart. And your knee should be bent to about 90 degrees of flexion. What we’re going to do once we get as far as it is we can with those feet is simply drop the knees together. In the process which you should feel as a stretch and the outside of your hips and for some of you that’s stretch will run right down in the outside of your hamstrings as well. So what we’re simply doing is we’re improving hip internal tissue which has a tremendously important impact on how your knee functions. And also how your hips function which mean playing to more lower back problems as well. So give this exercise a try either in your warm ups, after your long runs or throughout the day. And that you find that you notice some improvements in hip mobility. Check back next week for our next Monday Minute.