My right tfl is extremely tight. I have heard that strengthening the glute med will make it not as tight. I have also tried activating the psoas. Every time i try these exercises the tightness increases and the adductors on the same leg tighten up to try to pull my leg back into the groin.Â
Any ideas of how to loosen it up or strengthen the glute med? I foam roll the hamstring/adductor/tfl before I do any exercises.Â
Warning: This is going to hurt like hell.
Lay on the floor on your right side, legs stacked and your resting on your elbow or on your side like you would if you were to sleep. Place a t-ball type baseball (to start and then graduate to an actual baseball) and roll on your tfl. Do the same thing but now lay face and place the ball on your right hip flexor and roll it’s entirety. Once this is done (say 5mins total) then stretch your right hip flexor and tfl (search youtube if you need stretches). Repeat three times each time a more intense roll and stretch. Sounds like you have an a-symetrical hip shift and I would guess an anterior tilt. There is much more you can do for this but this would be a good start.
role the crap out of your TFL and your lateral quad.
also get a friend to help you with some PNF stretching.
lay down flat on the ground and bring your foot up as close to the side of your hip as possible, your knee will likely be a few inches off of the ground. so a few rounds of PNF until your knee is close to the ground or even touching it.
Definitely roll it out with a lacrosse ball, it should be pretty tender. Isolating the glute med will definitely help, an exercise I prefer is the side-lying wall slide for 2 sets for 20 reps, with a 5 second hold at the top. The key to really hammering the glute med and making sure the TFL doesn’t become activated is making sure when you do the wall slide, that you are consciously internally rotating the hip so that the heel is above the pinky toe.