Every grappler knows the importance of mobile hips for high performance jiu-jitsu and injury prevention.
But the aspect of hip mobility that many people are missing is hip internal rotation.
The ability of your femur to fully rotate in the socket, and the pelvis to move relatively to it, means full access to your movement options.
If you lack internal rotation, often times your body will find that missing range somewhere else. This can lead to compensations, restrictions, and overall poor mobility.
In turn, this increases your chances of injury, dysfunction, and pain.
I’m a believer in listening to your body, so if you’re not suffering from tight hips, pain, or restricted movement, then there’s no cause to fix something that isn’t an issue.
But, if gaining more mobility in your hips for better movement and injury prevention is a goal, improving your hip internal rotation is a smart place to explore.
Why Hip Internal Rotation for BJJ?
Your hips are involved in every major grappling movement, including sweeps, passes, takedown, and escapes.
The ability of your hips to move independently of each other, and your legs to have access to their full range of motion, is vital for effective and resilient BJJ.
This means smoother and faster, less clunky actions and reactions. Full hip range also makes new techniques available to you, like lasso and spider guards, low dynamic passing from the feet, and successful leg pummeling, to name a few.
Most importantly if your goal is BJJ longevity, is the injury prevention that comes with mobile, unrestricted hips. If you lack mobility, often, forces from dynamic grappling will travel to areas that aren’t designed to handle them, like your joints and spine.
Many knee and lower back injuries are the result of poor hip mobility, especially poor internal rotation.
Leg locks, specifically, restrict the mobility of the hip to create a breaking force at the knee or ankle.
The mobility of the hip affects everything above and below it.
Plus, tight hips just make you feel old and unathletic.
A Better Way To Improve Hip Internal Rotation
Many of the options to improve hip mobility on social media miss the mark. You’ll see a lot of banded hip internal rotation drills or controlled articular rotations (CARS) used to attack this issue.
While these things can help, the problem is that they don’t take into account the position of the femur or pelvis before mobilizing.
If your pelvis is in a poor position to start, or you femur is shoved to the front of the socket due to tight glutes, a forward center of gravity, or any other number of dysfunctions, then you are just grinding that femur further into its current position with these types of drills.
This may lubricate the joint and activate some of the supporting tissues, but it’s not doing much to resolve the restriction or create space for the femur to assume a better position relative to the pelvis.
You can improve the position of the bones, relieve tension, and create more space for better mobility through low intensity breathing drills.
A smart way to improve hip mobility from here is a progressive approach, where we first improve the position of the bone, then actively mobilize with dynamic mobility drills on the ground, then move to standing exercises.
Many current mobility drills are ground-based and attack solely the hip joint. But joints never work alone.
Fully functional and mobile hips require a total body involvement from the foot up through the knee and hip and into the spine.
Use the following sequence to improve your hip internal rotation progressively.
90/90 Hip Lift With Internal Rotation
The 90/90 Hip Lift drill is an excellent Postural Restoration drill to improve the position of the hips, including the femurs and pelvis, and their relationship to the spine and rib cage.
This is where I always start, to put things into a better position before actively mobilizing. The key, however, is to relax, and not use too much effort, which is a common mistake.
Deep, slow, relaxed breaths will help the nervous system find space and relax into a better position.
Kettlebell Armbar Roll Over
This one is excellent for multiple reasons, including shoulder stability, neck mobility, and trunk rotation, but what’s unique is how we mobilize the femur here.
By using a load and moving into a side-lying position we can essentially smash the bottom femur into a more internally rotated position. We are using load and strategic positions to find more space and better relative motion.
Try 12 reps on each side.
Loaded Shin Box
The Shin Box is commonly used by many online gurus for hip mobility, however, by adding load we can again improve the positions of bones, as opposed to simply activating tissues.
I start with a few breaths in the loaded Shin Box, trying to get the glute of the internally rotated leg flat on the ground. After, once you’re in a better position, you can add leg rotations, hip thrusts, and thoracic twists.
CLUBBELL Inside / Outside Circle
Finally, getting to both feet is the goal, as the hip works together with the rest of the body. Clubbell Circles is an easy way to improve hip mobility from a standing position, while also improving rotational ability.
In this move, you will feel your feet pronating and supinating under a rotating tibia and femur. The two halves of your pelvis must tip forward and backward while your obliques and core generate movement and support your spine.
This is total body integration, and exactly what’s required for the most primary human movement – walking.
Final Thoughts
I used to believe I could keep mobile resilient hips for BJJ with a few CARS, some foam rolling, and some deep Goblet Squats.
It wasn’t until I learned that the position of your bones and how they move relatively to each other is the key to effective and lasting mobility.
Simply doing joint mobility drills might gain you some space while activating surrounding tissues, but you can’t expect enduring results or sustained resilience if you haven’t improved the positions of your bones.
You may buy yourself some time, but your long term longevity may suffer.
Improve that with a smarter, more effective approach to hip internal rotation.
