WODdoc Episode 107 Project365: Anterior Hip Capsule Mobility

October 17, 2014 11:46 pm

Most of the time we spend mashin and mobilizing our muscles. Which is great and good and all but, joint mobility is important to. This one tonight is about hitting the anterior ligaments of the hip joint capsule.

Look above and you will notice several thick bands of connective tissue. That is what we are aiming to mobilize. You’ll notice in the video Steph doesn’t travel that far during her contract/relax exercise. That is because we are taking the joint to end range and using the band to assist us just a little bit further into the stretch. The mobilization begins with the joint sitting in end range. We contract just enough to relieve some tension, then relax into the vector the band is pulling. Very short motions here!

You smart ones out there might be asking yourselves why, if this is a capsule stretch, are we doing a contract/relax cycle…. joint capsules don’t contract???? Thats a good question, and one I asked when I was exposed to this mobility. The answer is, we still need to get through some muscular tissue to mobilize the joint. So, we use a contract relax cycle to cause the reflexive relaxation of the tissue which allows us to place more tension on the capsule itself.