It’s Day 7 of the Mykidstime 21 Day Health & Fitness Challenge! If you missed yesterday’s video, catch up with Day 6 here.
Our health and wellbeing expert, Fiona O’Donnell, explains what’s involved for Day 7 in the video below. We want you to tell us during the challenge how you are getting on so tag us on social using #mkt21days and we’ll give you some encouragement!
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Mykidstime 21 Day Health & Fitness Challenge: Day 7 – Hip Mobility
We are bringing you another movement challenge today, and today’s focus is on our hips. If you are sitting for long periods of time, if you’re in the car driving for long periods of time, I don’t know about you but my hips get so tight and this transfers into stiffness and tightness in my lower back.
There are two movements I’m going to ask you to engage in today. One is a hip mobility movement, three movements in each direction – again don’t speed through them, just do them nice and slowly. Do them with a focus in mind that you’re going to really try and feel your edges – you’ll know what I’m talking about when you see the exercise.
The second one is simply a downward dog, so you’re going to work your hip in its full range of movement first, and then we’re going to do a nice little stretch to finish off for the hamstrings. You can repeat this sequence as many times as you like; you can do it once a day, you can do it five times a day if you wish. The more you do these things, the more you’re going to bring stability and mobility into your hips.
If you’re the type of person who gets up in the morning and you’re tight and stiff in your lower back or in your hips, or if you’re just creaking getting out of the car, that is exactly the reason that you should be doing this series of exercises.
Get comfortable in an all fours position and you can bring your knee out to the side and rotate it forward. I want you to imagine that you’re drawing with a knee, so you can keep your lower leg relaxed, you can keep the knee bent, but imagine you’re drawing that circle with the knee. Do three in one direction and three in the other direction.
You might feel like the hip is a little bit clicky, and if that’s the case you can make the circles a little bit smaller. You might feel that the cheek of your bum is going to cramp or something else is going to cramp, if that’s the case just gently work through it and don’t push yourself too hard. What we’re trying to do is feel the edges of the joint – where can your leg go.
We’re doing two different directions – what you want to do is keep your belly button pulled towards the sky and keep your hips level so that you’re not swinging your pelvis everywhere. When you finish doing both legs in both directions, come back into a downward dog position. This is what we call cycling the legs – straightening one gently as you bend the other. You can start from here to come back to the beginning of this movement and repeat the process if you think it feels good.
If you have any questions throughout the Challenge, email Fiona or send her a message on Instagram, Facebook and use hashtag #mkt21days to let us know how you are getting on with the Challenge!
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About the Author: Fiona O'Donnell
