advice for tight hip flexors

[mustlovejumping]

This isn't a serious medical issue or anything, but please let me know if this goes too far into medical advice.

I am now a sophomore in college but I ran cross country my senior year of high school and I was also still dancing. I managed to pull my hip flexors on both sides in dance (not at the same time) because I was always so tight from running. My hips have had plenty of time to rest since then but I still sometimes have issues with them.

Most of the time they feel fine, and I've been working on stretching and strengthening. My problem is with cartwheels and roundoffs. I'm a righty and unfortunately my right hip flexor is worse than the left one. When I try to work on cartwheels on beam, my hip feels fine for the first 10 or so cartwheels and I can easily land on the beam, but after a while my hip will start hurting and I can't get my cartwheel to go in a straight line. I can live with not being able to work on cartwheels very much, but the biggest problem is that the same thing happens when I try to work on roundoffs. Obviously, roundoffs are very important for tumbling.

Anyone have any suggestions for me?

 

[Bella's Mom]

I don't have any answers but I'm definitely going to be watching this thread. My daughter has the same problem. She has very tight hip flexor muscles according to her coach. She is often pulling her groin when doing roundoffs and cartwheels. According to her coach, increasing her flexibility is the main fix. Ironically the tightness makes her inflexible but she needs flexibility to loosen up. So she has started stretching out a LOT.

 

[mustlovejumping]

Yeah I struggle with flexibility too so I've been trying to work on that more, but I have learned that I can't stretch my full right and left splits too much or that will aggravate my hips. I can do all the stretches leading up to full splits but I guess the pressure on my hips in a full split is too much more than a couple times a week.

 

[Kiwi]

I would recommend seeing a physiotherapist, especially if you can find one who is knowledgable about gymnastics, or dancing. They will be able to give you exercises to help with your specific problem.