How to get the hip flexibility for high feet without stretching for hours

“Is it my flexibility, or something else?”

Try this before you start stretching. Stand next to a wall with a hand on it for balance, and lift one knee as high and as wide as you can, the way you would for a high foot. Note where it gets to. Now pull it higher with your hand.

• If your hand gets it a lot higher, you have the range and can’t use it on your own yet. That needs strength at the end of your range, and it’s what the routine below trains.
• If your hand barely gets it higher, the range itself is short. Do the routine and add the stretches further down.
• If your foot gets onto the high hold and you can’t stand up on it, that’s technique: hips over the foot, then push with your leg.

The 10-minute routine, twice a week

Do it at home on two days, or at the end of a climbing session:

1. Squeeze the block. A yoga block or a folded towel between your raised knee and your elbow, pressed together while you lift the knee higher. It’s a high step, done standing on the floor.
2. 90/90 lift-offs. Sitting in a 90/90 position, you lift the back shin off the floor by turning the hip. A drop knee needs the same rotation, and at first it barely moves.

Expect it to feel shaky. Those muscles have rarely had to work at that length.

Use it on the wall

Range you’ve trained on the floor needs practice on the wall before you’ll trust it on a boulder.

• Start your climbing sessions with the high-step hip primer as part of your warm-up.
• Once a week, do high-step stretches on an easy wall: foot high, hips square to the wall, breathe, then stand up onto it.
• If you can get a foot high and can’t stand up on it, rock-over repeats on vertical and slabby walls teach you to move your hips over the foot and stand up with your leg.

Where stretching still fits

Long passive holds do work. They’re slow, and they’re the part people skip. Use them as extras when you have the time: the couch stretch if you sit all day and the front of your hip feels tight, and the frog stretch or a deep squat hold for turning your knees out and getting your hips close to the wall. In front of the TV counts.

Sticking with it matters more than which stretch you pick. Two short sessions a week for two months will get you further than an hour whenever you remember.

Where it goes wrong

• Forcing range. Ease into every position and back off at pain in the hip or the knee.
• Stretching cold. Do the routine after some easy movement, or after climbing.
• Only stretching passively. Your hip gets looser on the floor and still won’t hold the position on the wall.
• Changing the routine every week. Pick the two exercises above and stay with them long enough to see the knee test move.

Who this isn’t for

If a hip or a knee hurts when you high step, or a drop knee gives you a sharp pain, don’t train through it. See a physio before you start the routine.