Health Articles > Muscle-building > Increase Strength and Mobility Doing Hip Flexor Stretches

Although they seem to be one of the most important parts of the body for athletic and sporting activities, hip flexors seem to be one of the most neglected muscle groups for strength training. It is not very often you will find training programs that include hip flexor exercises and stretches. Some of the main reasons that they have been neglected are there is not really any way to train the hip flexor with free weights. They also are deep seated muscles rather than at the surface that may have been overlooked by many fitness experts in the past. One way that they seem to be strengthened is through complex leg extension exercises. Hamstrings can also be strengthened and developed though the use of hamstring leg curls. There are many advantages to have strong hip flexors in different sports and athletic activities. Sprinting longer strides and high knee lift is very important and having strengthened more flexible hip flexors increase this ability for this type of athlete. Hip flexor strength is also associated to different activities in football. For example, kicking a ball involves simultaneous knee extension and hip flexion, thus in order to achieve more power kicking requires different hip flexor exercises. Strong hip flexors can also be very helpful in tackling an opponent in football or rugby. An athletes explosive power and ability is directly reflected by the amount of flexibility and strength in the quadriceps and hip flexors. Football and rugby players who have developed quadriceps and the gluteus muscles are many times not able to get as much knee lift and lose mobility on the field, just shuffling their feet. Having stronger hip flexors would allow them to improve their mobility and strength. One of the problems in being able to develop hip flexor strength has been the lack of available exercises. A few of the exercises that have been used are hanging leg raises and the incline sit ups, both using ones own body weight. Although they do strengthen the hip flexor, it seems to be very limited. Many seem to have neglected the effective development of techniques that would increase strength in the hip flexor because of what it seems lack of importance. We really do not know the true benefits of what hip flexors can really do in increasing ones athletic performance and ability. It is an area that has generated more attention and only seems to offer more and more potential.