Why Are My Hips Tight All the Time? Why Stretching Isn’t Resolving Soreness [Video]

Why are My Hips Tight Even Though I Stretch All the Time? Summary

In this discussion, the Activ8 Posture team tackles a common question: "Why are my hips tight even though I stretch all the time?" They explain that hip tightness often stems from deeper issues than just the hips themselves. Stretching alone won't fix the problem if the root cause lies in postural imbalances, such as an anterior or posterior pelvic tilt. These imbalances affect how your muscles function and can limit your range of motion.

Even if you're stretching regularly, compensations from other parts of your body, like your upper body or ankles, can keep your hips from moving freely. For example, tight hip flexors and weak or inactive glutes, often due to prolonged sitting, can create muscular imbalances that reinforce tightness. These misalignments can prevent full hip extension and reduce the effectiveness of your movements, such as walking or running.

The team also emphasizes the importance of evaluating the entire body, not just the area that feels tight. Alignment, muscle activation, and proper gait mechanics are all crucial to resolving hip tightness. By addressing the underlying postural issues, you can restore balance and allow your body to move more efficiently.

This conversation serves as a reminder that to fully address hip tightness, it's essential to look beyond stretching and focus on correcting whole-body imbalances.

Why are My Hips Tight Even Though I Stretch All the Time? Transcript

Alright. Welcome. Today, we had a question about hip tightness. And so, the question is, “Why do my hips feel tight even though I stretch regularly?”

I think it's a great question, and it's definitely a common one. I feel like oftentimes, people will tend to just look at their bodies as just thinking of the area that's uncomfortable. So, in this scenario, it would be tight hips. So one would think, well, if I'm stretching them, stretching them, stretching them, how come they're not loosening up? But it goes deeper than that. You know, your whole body is connected.

So, if you have, for example, a forward tilt in your pelvis, no matter how much you just try to stretch those hips, if you still have that tilt, for example, it's you're gonna be restricted regardless. And then it's trying to figure out, well, where is, in this example, the tilt coming from? What's causing that? 

Yeah. Totally. And, unfortunately, we see that a lot. And there's also the time on task. So if you're… let's say you're a desk jockey and you're stuck at a desk all the time, and that's the predominant place you're in, then it can do two things. It can shorten some muscles and then they can get used to that short position – like your hip flexors – but then it can also inhibit other muscles. So we talked about glute amnesia or dead butt syndrome, where, literally, people's butts are shutting down and shutting off when they're sitting for so many hours at a time.

And so, the glutes on the backside. So, to your point, Miranda, about the anterior pelvic tilt is, well, that also lengthens the glutes and puts them out of a leverage position or out of the mechanical advantageous position that they're normally in. And then, it puts the hip flexors into a short position where it gives them a chance to actually grab and hold. And so, now we're in this imbalance, and then we're stuck there. So when we consider something like that, then that can take us another route too.

So, again, time on task is another component of this also that leads to postural imbalances, and it also reinforces it when we have not-so-great ones. 

Yeah. And it's thinking – I was just using the anterior pelvic tilt as an example. Just if your hips are tilted forward, yes, the muscles are long and short in certain areas, but it's also just locked up. It doesn't have the freedom ability to move through that full range because it's limited by the positioning of the hips.

So, a client I have was talking about – he feels like his steps are short, and that's something that his partner has noticed that when he's walking, his steps are really short even though he's so tall – why doesn't he have these long strides? And his hips are locked in that position that it does limit him, that he's only able to take his steps at a certain length because he's stuck in that position.

Yeah. And a lot of runners go after the big movers like the hamstrings and the calves and their hip flexors, so they'll stretch those out. But the question is, why are they tight in the first place? Right? So that's something that we miss. 

So, a lot of people have tight hip flexors, but that doesn't mean that they are active or that they're strong, or functional for that matter. So, if we're just stretching the tight muscles, it's like, oh, well, those hamstrings might actually be trying to protect you. So, again, back to that example of an anterior pelvic tilt or even if someone's in a posterior pelvic tilt, those hamstrings can actually grab on to try to get leverage at the pelvis to try to hold on so that you're not damaging your back.

Too many people are using their back instead of their hip to extend. So to your point also about the stride length is, well, yeah, if we're stuck anterior and then we're in a position where we can get the leg through pretty well, but we're never truly getting the hip extension. So, if the pelvis is neutral and in gait, what's supposed to happen is the pelvis is actually supposed to tip forward through extension, and then it's supposed to rotate back into a posterior tilt as we advance the leg underneath us and go forward. And so if that's not happening, we're just stuck here, then it's like we're just pounding in that back area.

And that hamstring is now in the, again, mechanical advantage position to do the job for us, but the glute is totally out of position to do it. Unless we're going uphill or going upstairs, we're doing something else. And it's like, well, that glutes completely shut down. And the glute is the antagonist of the hip flexor. And so if we're not able to get the glute, well, the hip flexor again just wins in terms of that tug of war.

It's like, well, these guys are just short, and they're just hanging on, and the glute is unable to do its job. But that's just one example too. So you have to think, to Miranda's point also, is where is that really coming from? 

So let's say you had an ankle that doesn't properly dorsiflex. It doesn't… the toes don't come back towards the shin properly. Well, that means that you could actually push off sooner than you're supposed to, and then your hip is never actually going through. And so you're not actually elongating the muscles and shortening them like you're supposed to. So you're just staying in that short range, which is just reinforcing that tightness. So the front and back sides are getting tighter. 

It's like an endless cycle if you're not getting to that root cause.

Yeah. Exactly. 

What should people be cuing into instead of just the tight hips? 

Oh, well, I like using the step back test just in general when I have clients that have tight hips, and I would say 9 out of 10 times, those clients probably even – probably 10 out of 10 times – instead of getting that full extension, which I feel it goes back to even when we're talking about foot positioning earlier.

Instead of that back foot, when the hip tries to extend kind of just staying neutral, I see a lot of external rotation or eversion of the foot. And that's usually when clients are like, oh, this feels fine. And I'm like, I want you to look down at your feet. And because they think they're totally straight. And then once we kind of just during the testing, this isn't a solution.

But just when I asked them to adjust the foot, all of a sudden, they're like, woah. Because that's when they can tell how limited their hip is, so that's a pattern that I see quite often. 

Yeah, and then the compensation runs through the body or, like you said before, it might be coming from somewhere else.

I'll see the upper body try to rotate or offset as an example. So it's not always just glutes, even though they are a big part of it. I feel like there are definitely some spinal issues that can translate down to the hips. 

Yeah. I actually just did that test with someone earlier, and it was, oh, step back, stand here, and it was with her on the screen – it was on Zoom – and I said, do you see where your belly button is pointing? She's like, yeah, my belly button is pointing there. And I asked her, well, how about your shoulders? Do you feel it's one shoulder in front? And then she's like, oh, yeah.

My left shoulder is also equal to the front. She's like, why is that? And it was just that hip positioning and it was okay, try to straighten your feet and when she tried to straighten that's when her body just started to follow and twist and rotate with it. And it only happened on one side.

When it was the other side, everything was pretty square and forward. So I was like, okay, it's that hip that's kind of locked up that's translating all through the rest of your body where it's all connected together. So it might be a hip issue, but why is it that when we correct your hips or try to correct it, then why is your body twisting and turning in reaction to it? So is it top-bottom or is it bottom-top?

Yeah. Totally. Nowadays, where there's so many people that the upper body is the driver because we're sedentary and because we sit on our our glutes, on our butts, and don't do a whole lot with them versus our ancestors that just had to walk everywhere and even migrating and moving around. So we just don't use it as much. So it's definitely a use or lose it.

One thing I like to cue into also, I I think that trunk positioning and and just looking in the mirror as you're walking towards it. I think that's great because it gives you an idea of there's excessive movement versus just normal arm swing, then that's gonna tell you that there's a lot of either compensation or driving by the upper body to help out the hips and tells you that you don't have the right mechanics there. 

And the other thing, foot position, but knee position as well. So the kneecap, the knee, the patella is not pointing straight ahead as you're as you're walking and it kind of flares out or stays out or caves in a lot, then it's gonna tell you that, well, yeah, this my hip is gonna have to be doing a lot of tightness. And for people with, let's say, arthritic hips, for example, their groin just gets tight and tight and tight. And a lot of times it's because, those muscles are just trying to hang on because the the hip is not rotating in the socket like it's supposed to.

And so it's in the way we look at that is, yeah, we have to look at the whole body for sure, and then upper body involvement, thoracic extension, thoracic rotation that we need to take out. But then it's also like getting the pelvis to move, and then it's also getting that femur to sit properly so that we're using the right muscles in the hip because otherwise, the same muscles that aren't actually supposed to be used for gait are doing the primary job. So the adductors become hip flexors, which they're not supposed to be, and some of the other muscles just get shut off. And then the lateral glute muscles, the back of the glute and all that stuff just gets tight and just hangs on. It's like you're taking a string and just winding it, winding it, winding it.

So, as you're walking, it's getting wound up rather than what should be happening is it actually should be releasing and stretching and extending and going through like normal fluid movement. And that's how our bodies oxygenate and provide nutrients to the area, is by contraction and relaxation of the muscles versus just this, again, just winding up and then just feeling like it's tighter and tighter. 

It's all connected together.