Why you should know about this important nerve…
"Brainy What-Why-How"
Your weekly nibble of science-backed goodness to help you move better and feel unstoppable.
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What (the TL:DR)
f your hip flexors feel really tight and/or weak, they might need more than just stretching and strengthening.
Why (the geeky neurology)
Most of us understand the muscles well enough:
They can be weak or strong...
they can activate or relax...
they can lengthen and contract.
But what is not yet at the forefront of mainstream fitness is the appreciation that these muscles only do what they do thanks to the NERVES that innervate them.
Maybe it's all the sitting we do... but one peripheral nerve can get compressed and sticky:
The Femoral Nerve. It runs down the front of your hips and quads and innervates the hip flexor muscles.
When any nerve is unhappy, the femoral nerve included, it's inhibited in its job of carrying signals from your brain like "activate!" or "relax!" to the muscles.
How (apply it to your life)
Try it yourself:
Check out this post for a little demo of this nerve tensioning movement or better yet, join the Gentle (ish) Full Body “Ease Exceeds Effort” flow on Move With Adell where I cue you through it!
Test your hip flexors (maybe in strength, or maybe simply in how they feel being stretched) before the nerve tensioning movement. Then retest to see if it helped!
Nerve tensioning, slackening, and flossing* are practices we can utilise to help our peripheral nerves carry that important information between muscles and tissues, and the brain. I use these A LOT in my classes on Move With Adell as well as my personal practice because they're soooo effective!
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This month's theme on Move With Adell is Asteya, so I'll leave you with this quote from Gandhi:
“The world has enough for everyone's needs, but not everyone's greed.”
Thank you for reading!
Please share with a friend who might find this valuable.
Wishing all your peripheral nerves easy gliding,
Adell