The Canadian University Soccer season is here, and this year marks my 3rd season as Assistant Coach and Fitness Coach with the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) Ridgebacks Women’s Varsity Soccer Team.  This season, I will be blogging every day with a ‘Tip of the Day’ – a small piece of information about the testing, training, monitoring, or performance analysis I am doing with the team.

Today’s Tip of the Day is about hip mobility.  The hip joint is one of the most often injured areas of the body in many sports including soccer, however, the hip is especially susceptible to injury in soccer because of the repetitive kicking (and plating) movements involved in the sport.  Mobility of the hip, which involves flexibility and strength throughout its range of motion, is a key contributor to prevention of several hip injuries, including:

• hip flexor strains
• groin strains
• glute strains
• IT band syndrome
• stretching/tearing of the labrum

In general, hip mobility exercises should involve a dynamic stretch of the main hip muscles (psoas, adductors, abductors, glutes and hamstrings) in combination with loading of the muscles.  Hip mobility exercises should be done following a warm-up, to ensure that maximum range of motion and loading can take place.  Below is a video of a simple hip mobility exercise that I like to use with the players I work with.  It takes only a few minutes, and is very effective as a means of preventing hip injuries in soccer.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about this topic.  Drop me a line here to get the conversation started.