The Resilient Movement Blog

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Can't Touch Your Toes? Do This For Instant Improvements

hip mobility Jan 21, 2025

The toe touch test can be a good assessment to understand a client's (or your own) hip mobility.

This simple drill can expose how well our hips are moving, and if there is excessive tension that needs to be addressed.

If there is pain or difficulty bending over to touch the toes this often means tension along the backside of the pelvis. This tension, or compression, typically squeezes the sit bones closer to the sacrum, which means that the two areas cant move away from each other to effectively perform the toe touch.

Instead, the entire pelvis dumps over causing limited range of motion and sometimes pain.

As we reach further down the legs, around mid thigh, the femurs also begin to internally rotate in the socket, which creates even more space in the back of the hip to fully reach the toes.

An excellent exercise we can use to improve both mechanics of the pelvis and the femur is the Knee-To-Wall Hinge. 

Unlike a traditional single leg or bilateral hinge, we can keep the back of the hip open because we are pushing our knee forward into a foam roller, creating the space we need for effective hinging.

This is a great exercise to use with any client who has trouble touching their toes due to excess tension in the posterior pelvis, or to teach proper hinging mechanics.

In today's video, I go into detail on how to properly perform this exercise, as well as a variation for even more benefits.

 

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