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Today I noticed that when I sit like this:

Sitting cross legged https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sitting_on_a_chair_with_legs_crossed_in_swimming_shorts.jpg

My left leg goes comfortably all the way down, but my right leg won't. It won't go down past 45 degrees unless stretched. Does this mean that the right hip flexors are tight and can this cause tight hamstring and calf muscles?

What stretches should I be working on to release this? I've tried basic hamstring stretches without success.

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  • Welcome to Physical Fitness.SE! Athlean-X has an excellent video on hip flexor tightness and IIRC around the 4 minute mark he illustrates a simple test to determine if your hip flexors are not up to snuff. This doesn't really answer your Achilles tendon problem, but may shed some light on the issue? Jun 6, 2019 at 13:06
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    I don't believe this is off topic at all. This has NOTHING to do with "health" - it has EVERYTHING to do with working out correctly, which is what this board is about. To me, it's entirely absurd that good posts like these get flagged as off topic. @Benjamin To me it looks like your IT band is tight, your hip flexors might be tight, but sitting like that mainly tests for IT band inflexibility.
    – VSO
    Jun 6, 2019 at 14:03
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    @VSO - I understand your frustration, but medical diagnosis type questions have always been off topic. Even on Health/Medical Science, "diagnose me" type questions are off topic. Additionally, even if this wasn't a "why do I hurt here?" type of question, there is nothing about fitness or working out in the post. If you would like, you can raise the question on meta and see how the community feels about it.
    – JohnP
    Jun 6, 2019 at 21:38
  • There is a special clinical test for this called the FABER (or Patrick) Test. This test is commonly utilized to detect hip, lumbar spine, or sacroiliac joint pathology. physio-pedia.com/FABER_Test
    – MikeDTech
    Jun 7, 2019 at 3:59
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    @VSO - See my reply to benjamin.
    – JohnP
    Jun 10, 2019 at 0:51

1 Answer 1

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My guess is that the asymmetry you are observing has nothing to do with tightness or lack of stretching. My guess is that the shape of your pelvis and/or your femoral head is asymmetric. I've seen the same thing, but much worst, in a lady client of mine. She has had two hip replacements, and one of the replacements had to be done twice (I guess they screwed up the first one). When they repeat a hip replacement, they have to remove a lot more of your own bone. As a result, her two hips are very asymmetric, and one of her knees won't go down when she crosses legs.

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  • So your estimate is based on comparing a lady with two hip replacements to an (apparently) healthy male with no hip replacements? I'm not really sure that's a logical correlation to make.
    – JohnP
    Jun 11, 2019 at 13:52
  • I could be wrong.
    – Chris
    Jun 11, 2019 at 19:49

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