Hip Flexor and Speed

What are hip flexors? A group of 5 key muscles that contribute to bending or flexing the hip: iliacus, psoas, pectineus, rectus femoris, and sartorius.

The muscle group crucial to movement through out your swim. Everytime you kick you are engaging your hip flexor muscles.

How Important are they for Swimmers?

They affect nearly every aspect of your swim! Not just your kick, but body position and rotation. Without strong hip flexors you can’t have a good start off the blocks, or do a flip turn , or push off the wall for break-outs. Forget about Swimming butterfly or Breaststroke. And Speed. Don’t forget that you can’t be fast without them.

One of the reasons is that Hip flexors aid in hip extension. Hip extension happens when you open your hip joint. You extend your hip anytime you increase the angle between the thigh and the front of the pelvis, which can start from any degree of flexion. It is the source of power when you kick.

2 ways to develop and Strengthen Hip Flexors

• Incorporating Mobility, flexibility and agility exercises into dryland workouts. Like running, Competitive Swimming places a significant amount of repetitive stress on the hip joint. That stress can lead to tight hips, glutes, quads, and back muscles. Warm-up before practice and competiton will help alleviate the tightness and prevent injury.

  
  

• Training your hip flexor with Plyo, strength resistance training and weight training will boost your power and speed.

Swimmers need powerful hip muscles to bend, raise your knee towards your torso, and for hip extension and lateral movements. Try these 8 exercises, specifically targeting the hip flexor muscle groups. You will see the results in the pool!