maratoolIntermediate Hip Flexor and Quad Stretch
How to do the intermediate hip flexor and quad stretch
- Lie face down on the floor, with a rope, belt, or band looped around one foot.
- Flex the knee and extend the hip of the leg to be stretched, using both hands to pull on the belt. Your knee and your hip should come off of the floor, creating tension in the hip flexors and quadriceps. Hold the stretch for 10-20 seconds, and repeat on the other leg.
Muscles worked
The muscles under tension are the quadriceps across the front of the thigh, which straighten the knee and, just as importantly, control it on the way back down.
A stretch loads them at the far end of the range they normally work in, so the position you hold is itself the resistance.
Every exercise for:Quadriceps
How this movement works
Several joints combine to set the position, and then everything stops. Because the shape is held rather than repeated, the limit is how long the whole chain stays where you put it — not how strong any single muscle in that chain happens to be.
It is filed under stretching, so the target is range of motion rather than force — a position you can settle into and breathe in, held long enough for the tissue to give.
What you need
These train the quadriceps too, using equipment this one does not:
- Iron Cross with Dumbbellsdumbbell
- Jefferson Squatsbarbell
- Jogging, Treadmillmachine
- Kettlebell Pistol Squatkettlebell
- Lying Prone Quadricepsbody only
Difficulty
Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.
Of the 173 quadriceps exercises in this database, 62 are listed at intermediate level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.