Welcome to Week 1

BOOT(y)CAMP 🍑

Welcome to WEEK 1 of KIMFIT HIPS BOOT(y)CAMP 🍑. The last day of tight hips, inflexibility, and weak glutes.

In this weekly series, you’ll have step-by-step guidance into learning about the different movements of the hip, breathing positions, and anatomy lessons. Each week is broken down into different action of the hip to make it simple to understand!

Below is a weekly suggested calendar! Happy moving!

-Coach John

Week 1: Breathing, Pelvic Positioning, & of course HIPS…duh

1.Intro to Breathing

How do you breathe? When you take a deep breath in, does your chest rise up or does your belly expand out? 🧐

Well if you just took a breath and found out which type of breather you are, good for you. if not do it now!
One of the biggest principles I will teach is optimal breathing through diaphragmatic breathing or belly breathing. Why?? First lets talk about the biological reasons to diaphragmatically breathe vs chest breathing.

Fight or Flight, ever heard of her? When we are in our day to day lives, we deal with a lot of stressors, whether we are bombarded with a laundry list of tasks to do or getting chased by a bear, our body recognizes stress as …. STRESS, and when we breathe shallow (chest breath) we stay in that fight or flight mode or the sympathetic state. When stress gets to us, chronic or acute, our body’s reaction is to increase cortisol levels, meaning elevated blood pressure & heart rate, and changes to our metabolic hormones until the stressor is no longer a threat to ourselves, then our body does the complex job of returning to baseline. When we diaphragmatically breathing, deep into our lower abdominals, we tune into our Rest & Digest mode or our parasympathetic state, we turn off our fight or flight mode and into a groovy, relaxed, and rejuvenating state of being. So how can I be groovy, relaxed and rejuvenated all the time??? Well first step is learning how to breathe better, through deep, diaphragmatic breathing, we can achieve our rest and digest mode in as little as three minutes, so that’s why in each week, you’ll learn new ways to breathe, and learn how that can improve your hip mobility.

So know we know the biological benefits that diaphragmatic breathing has, lets talk about the physiological changes diaphragmatic breathing can help us with our mobility, our fascia lines, and the hopes for stronger, thiccer hips.

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/imagepages/19072.htm

So let’s talk about the diaphragm. The diaphragm is a muscle that is made up of fascia, and fascia is any tissue that contains features capable of responding to mechanical stimuli, it supports, divides, penetrates and connects the entire body together synergistically (Bordoni B, Simonelli M & Morabito B (2019). Without fascia, we would be a pile of bones, organs and muscles. Fascia allows us to stand tall at attention and lets us move our bodies with grace and flow. Fascia has memory and awareness, it can learn, adapt, and change (just like you! 😍), it can become rigid and structural to protect our spine when we lift heavy things or can become fluid when we are twist and turn. So when we think of the diaphragm think of it as a fascial tissue that allows for movement, can be rigid or fluid, and is always adapting to its environment. What does that mean for you? By influencing your breath towards more diaphragmatic breathing, we can influence the connective tissue around the diaphragm and spine (aka the hip & all its muscles). So, after 30 years and you still can’t touch your toes, there’s still time!!!!

Now that we have a better understanding of what the diaphragm is and its function, lets get into some practice.

You have two breathing positions this week: 90 / 90 Breathing on your Back & Seated Breathing

90/90 Breathing will put you in an optimal position for your hamstrings, adductors and abdominals & Seated Breathing will help you with that same optimization, just in a seated position, you’ll also learn about Pelvic Positioning (anterior pelvic tilt, posterior pelvic tilt and a nuetral pelvic position)

2. Spine & HiP Anatomy 🫁

It is important to understand the relationship between your spine and your hips if your goal is to improve function & becoming more conscious of how YOUR body moves. When we think of your spine, we have natural curves, so when you stand straight up your spine doesn’t naturally zip up into a straight line. Same goes if we are bending over in a deadlift or hinge position, our spine doesn’t naturally go in a straight line, we must actively contract our erector spinaes & other supporting muscles to allow for a “neutral” spine or a flat back.

When it comes to hip movement, we can dissect our body into two parts: from our upper abdominals and up & our lower abdominals and down. Since KIMFIT HIPS goal is to improve HIP function, we are thinking of movement from the lower abdominals and down. Obviously there are some drills and instruction on the whole spine, but that’s there to help build more awareness for you!

Finding Neutral. What in the hell does that mean? To simplify, lets think of our first position, on your back in a 90/90 position, because it takes away from the influence of your upper torso as well as your knees down. When we are on our back it also gives us some feedback:

• Flatten our low back so it is flush with the floor

• Drive your heals either into the chair or down towards the floor without actually moving your feet, which will engage your hamstrings & adductors allowing them to raise your pelvis slightly and stacking directly under the ribs, which is the axial alignment our bodies were designed to be in

You’ve probably heard of Anterior and Poster Pelvic Tilts, and there usually bad connotation behind them. We can be in these extreme when we sit, stand, and lay. If we stay in these positions for far too long, our fascia adapts to these positions, and when we go and workout and put our bodies through mechanical stress through weight lifting or even bodyweight exercises, if we have not primed our body for movement, that’s where injuries and pain come in. Have you ever bent over after sitting for a long period of time, and either had a back spasm or pulled a muscle? This is a similar case with poor pelvic control.

Think of your pelvis as a U shape or Cup of water. Neutral the water is not spilling out. When we are in an Anterior Pelvic Tilt water falls out forwards, and is associated with tight hips and weak hamstrings. In a Posterior Pelvic Tilt, think water falling out backwards, and associated with tight hamstrings & glutes, and weak hip flexors, external obliques, and abdominals.

So how can I fix this? Breath & Movement. But one cannot be achieved without the other. If you can’t breathe in a static position, how do you think you are going to achieve movement without compensation or future injury?

So start with your two breathing positions, and let’s move!

3. Movement 🤸🏻‍♀️

This week we are covering more global movements of the Spine & Hips, goal of this week is for awareness and building your own library of movements, what feels good, what feels tight, is there any imbalances? And if you haven’t already taken the KIMFIT HIPS Self Assessment, now is a great time to know your baseline. You can find that in the Members Areas.

• Cat Cow

  • 4 Sets x 6 Reps

  • Quadruped Position

  • Spinal Flexion/Extension

  • Notes: Start at the Pelvis, one vertebra at a time

• Spinal Segmentation

  • 4 Sets x 4 Reps

  • Seated Kneeling Position

  • Spinal Flexion/Extension

  • Notes: Start at the Pelvis, one vertebra at a time; grab your knees to create an anchor for your body

• Windshield Wipers

  • 4 Sets x 12 Reps each side

  • Supine Position (on your back)

  • Feet about hip width apart

  • rotate both knees to one side, repeat

  • Notes: get deeper each side, stretch out your QL, TFL, external rotators

  • Deeper Stretch: try putting your outside heel on the outside of your other knee and lghtly add pressure to your heel, sync breath

• Quadruped T-Spine Rotation

  • 3 Sets x 8 Reps each side

  • Quadruped Position

  • Place one hand behind your head, drive the elbow towards the floor, and keeping your low back flat, belly button draws into your spine, and rotate your torso up towards the sky

  • Notes: sync your breathing with the movement, inhale as you go down, exhale as you go up

• Quadruped Side Bends

  • 4 Sets x 10 Reps each side

  • Quadruped Position

  • Thinking of bringing one hip to the same side ribs

  • Try to go slow and control the movement, thinking of the hip coming up

  • As you get better at this, become more hip dominant as your bend side to side keeping your torso from moving