What tight hips feel like
You stand up from your desk and the first few steps are short. The front of your hip takes a moment to open, so you walk a little bent until it does. A chair holds your hips folded at one angle for hours, and when you finally straighten up, you feel every one of those hours.
That feeling is stiffness, not damage. It responds to a few minutes of attention. The question is which hip stretches to reach for, and the answer splits in two.
The standing way
The standing way suits the minutes right after you close the laptop. You still have your shoes on. You have some energy left. You don't want to lie on the floor yet.
Start with a Squat Stretch. Feet a little wider than your hips, sink down, elbows inside the knees, and press the knees gently open. You feel your inner thighs and hips wake up at the same time. If your heels don't reach the floor, that's fine. It's useful information about your ankles.
Then a Standing Quad. One heel drawn up toward your glute, knees together, hips pressed gently forward. The front of your thigh stretches first. Press the hips forward a little more and the stretch climbs into the front of your hip. That's the exact spot the chair kept folded.
Then a Lunge. Back knee on the floor, front knee over the ankle, hips shifted forward. This one reaches deeper into the front of the hip than the quad stretch does, because the leg is behind you instead of beneath you. Let the hips sink and breathe there.
That's the logic of our Open hips routine: work the front of the hips while you're up and moving, then go down to the floor for figure four and butterfly at the end. By the time you lie down, everything is warm.
The floor way
The floor way is slower, and that's the point. It suits the end of the day, when you're done moving and want holds you can settle into rather than pass through.
Start seated with a Butterfly. Soles of your feet together, hands on your ankles, knees drifting down under their own weight. You feel it along your inner thighs. The further your heels are from you, the gentler it gets, so you choose how much you get.
Then lie back for a Lying Figure Four. One ankle crossed over the opposite thigh, hands around the back of the standing leg, drawing it in. This one finds the outside of your hip and your glute, the part of you that was pressed into a chair all day. You stay on your back the whole time, head down, shoulders heavy.
Finish with Happy Baby. Hold the backs of your thighs, let your knees fall wide, rock a little side to side if it feels good. It looks a bit silly. It feels great.
Our Floor hips routine follows the same idea: it opens seated, works down onto the floor, and never makes you stand back up. At the end of the day, that matters more than you'd think.
How to pick
Go by the moment, not by which one sounds more serious.
If it's morning, or right after work, and you have some energy: stand. Moving work suits a body that is about to keep moving, and a body that just woke up would rather move than fold.
If it's the last hour of the day: take the floor. The long holds feel better when you have nowhere to be, and you finish lying down, which is where you were headed anyway.
If you're short on time, either works. Neither of these takes long, and a few minutes is enough. Long sessions don't buy you much more than short ones do, so take the short one and get on with your evening.
If you're torn, pick the one you'll do tonight. That's the better routine.
What to expect
In the moment: you stand up out of the last hold and your hips feel looser than they did going in. That part is immediate.
Over weeks: with a few minutes on most days, your range builds. You notice it first in the squat, when your hips sit lower without complaint, and in the lunge, when you can shift further forward before you feel the pull.
Two notes. Stiff is normal and sharp is not: if a stretch causes sharp pain, stop, and if it keeps happening, talk to a doctor. And this is a practice, not a project. A missed week doesn't send you back to zero, so come back and carry on.
If you would rather not decide
Standing or floor is a small decision, but small decisions at nine in the evening are how a stretch ends up not happening. Zenbody makes it for you. Tell the app your moment and how long you have, and it hands you the practice: the standing entry after work, the floor entry at night, one movement at a time with a timer, so all you do is tap Begin.
Both routines above live in the app, along with everything else we have for the hips. Zenbody is on the App Store for iPhone.