Hip Mobility Exercises: Internal and External Rotation in Yoga
Article At A Glance
What is hip mobility, and how can you use it to your advantage in a yoga practice? Here, discover the best hip mobility exercises and hip-opening yoga postures to improve flexibility and deepen your yoga poses.
What are the best hip mobility exercises in yoga? To effectively mobilize all the parts of the hips, it’s important to understand the basics of internal and external rotation.
In this post, we’ll take a look at how we can open the hips in the transverse (horizontal) plane. If you missed the sagittal and coronal planes, please check out part I and part II of this series. Remember that the transverse plane is all about rotation, so we’ll be looking at the internal and external rotation of the hips.
The Hip Rotator Muscles
Rotation is definitely the most complex of the hip movements. It involves stretching mainly the external rotator muscles: gluteus maximus, and the front parts of gluteus medius and minimus; and the deep external rotator muscles: piriformis, obturator internus, obturator externus, gemellus superior, gemellus inferior, and quadratus femoris.
There are a lot of muscles, so just call them the hip external rotators and deep external rotators if that helps! These muscles connect from the back and outsides of your pelvis to the big bony bump on the top and outside of your thighbone (femur). See the external rotators below.
Just as we focus more on mobilizing the hip flexors and adductors in the other planes, in the transverse plane, we do more to mobilize the external rotator muscles than the internal rotator muscles: tensor fascia latae (TFL), some adductors, gluteus medius and minimus (anterior fibers).
Hip Mobility Exercises for the External Rotators With External Rotation
Mobilizing the external rotators can be a little confusing. We’ll need to break our “use-the-opposite-motion-of-a-muscle-to-stretch-it” rule. Hip mobilizing exercises with rotation often involve flexing the hips first. Hip flexion is then combined with different degrees of adduction, abduction, and/or external rotation to stretch the external rotator muscles.
The reason is that flexion changes the angle of pull of some of these muscles. Most of these poses will involve some variation of Ardha Raja Kapotasana (Half-Pigeon Pose) or Eka Pada Utkatasana (Figure 4 Pose) leg as in the poses below.
Mobilizing the hips with external rotation will help you access poses such as Eka Pada Galavasana (Flying Pigeon Pose) (photo above right).
And don’t forget your Half Pigeon variations…
Hip Mobility Exercises for the External Rotators with Internal Rotation
Internal hip rotation can also be used to mobilize the hips in the transverse plane. Internal rotation by itself will focus on stretching the deep external rotators. You can feel these stretches really deep and low in the back of the hips. Take a look at the pictures below for some examples.
Mobilizing your hips with internal rotation will release those deep external rotator muscles that work so hard to stabilize your pelvis. It will also help you deepen your Garudasana (Eagle Pose) to get your foot to wrap behind your calf finally!
Summary of Hip Mobility Exercises
That’s it for basic hip mobility exercises! Now you know how to mobilize all the parts of the hips and which parts to open for the poses you’re preparing for. Remember:
- Extension: Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I Pose), Anjaneyasana (High Lunge Pose), and backbends will mobilize the fronts of the hips.
- Abduction: Virabhadrasana II (Warrior II Pose), Vatayanasana (Horse Pose), and Supta Baddha Konasana (Supine Bound Angle Pose) will mobilize the insides of the hips.
- External rotation with flexion: Raja Kapotasana (Pigeon Pose variations), Gomukhasana (Cow Face Pose), and Padmasana (Lotus Pose) will mobilize the external rotators in the back and outside of the hips.
- Internal rotation alone: Reclining Hero yoga Pose (Supta Virasana) (pose pictured above) will mobilize the deep external rotators deep and low in the back of the hips.
Reprinted with permission from balancedflow.today
Dr. Nolan Lee is a yoga teacher and physical rehab specialist in Chicago, IL, with an extraordinary passion for understanding how the body moves and functions. Nolan has the unique ability to blend the science of anatomy with the art of yoga. With an active practice at this clinic, Balanced Flow Wellness, he practically applies yoga to restore and maintain health. Dr. Lee also holds a Master of Acupuncture degree and is a NASM-certified corrective exercise specialist (CES). He enthusiastically shares his knowledge of yoga and anatomy in lectures and workshops and on his blog.
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