Stretches for your Bottom Half

The muscles of your lower body — your hips, buttocks, thighs, calves, ankles, and feet —all work together like the many different instruments in an orchestra. When they’re all doing their part, they make beautiful music together, but when one of them is out of tune, the entire performance suffers.
Tightness in the lower body can be the hidden culprit in a wide variety of ailments that, at first glance, you may not blame them for. Poor posture, disorders of the back such as lordosis (swayback) or scoliosis (lateral curvature of the spine), indigestion, headaches, and even difficulty breathing can all be caused to one degree or another by imbalances in the lower body due to muscle tension and tightness.
For yet another example, a runner with tight hamstrings can have a shortened stride due to the tightness. A shortened stride means more steps, which means expending more energy, which means energy wasted. It also means more impact, which can lead to more injuries. But stretching can stop this cycle of doom, once and for all. In this chapter, I break down the muscles of the lower body into sections: hips and buttocks, hamstrings, quadriceps, groin and inner thigh, lower leg, and feet and ankles. Each section gives you a variety of stretches for that particular area. Experiment with each stretch to see which stretches suit your body best.
Throughout the following stretches for your hips, buttocks, and thighs, be aware of the position of your pelvis. All these muscles are attached to your pelvis in one way or another, and if your pelvis isn’t correctly positioned, you can diminish the effectiveness of these stretches