When I stretch my hip flexor muscles I feel it in the front of my thighs. Is this right?

The short answer is yes! In my first post I talked about the movement of hip flexion and listed the hip flexors. We have already covered the iliopsoas the main flexor of the hip. Today I am going to talk about the rectus femoris muscle which also assist with hip flexion.

The rectus femoris is the large muscles at the front of your upper thigh. If you sit down with a tray on your lap, the tray would be resting on your rectus femoris. It is part of the quadriceps, four muscles on the front of the leg between the pelvis and the knee. Rectus femoris is the only quadricep that reaches over the hip joint as it originates on the front of the pelvis.

In class I often reference your ASIS (Anterior Superior Illiac Spine), you have two and they are the nobly bones you can feel through your skin at the front of your pelvis. Well you also have two AIIS (Anterior Inferior Illiac Spine) this is another nobly part of the pelvic bone at the front of the body just below the ASIS and this is where the rectus femoris originates. Why not feel this part of your body now, trace a line from below the ASIS along the thigh to the top of the knee bone. Finally the rectus femoris ends (inserts) as part of the quadriceps tendon onto the Patella (knee bone).

So if you feel a stretching through your quadriceps when you are stretching your hip flexors, that is just as it should be. Your hip flexors are a group of muscles that includes one of your quadriceps.

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