Developing Hip Function: A Hallmark of Athleticism
Quiz Time
What do the following things have in common?
- Sitting at a desk
- Long distance running
- Improper squatting
- Chondromalacia and other knee problems
- Lower back pain
And what about these?
- An uppercut
- A homerun swing
- Sprinting
- Dunking a basketball
- The inability to lie (Oh, you knew it was coming and I did you the favor of getting it out of the way early instead of making you anticipate)
The first group, if you didn’t gather, is things that cause (first three) or are results of (last two) weak hips. The second group is things that all involve powerful hip action.
The Hips In Action
Previously, I discussed the role of the abdominals and lower back in maintaining health and athleticism. Today, I want to look at the role of the hips in athleticism. The musculature around the hips is possibly the most important complex in the body, yet is underdeveloped in most people. You can look at a person’s movements throughout this area – their ability to open and close the hips, surrounding musculature, flexibility – and get a very good read on where they are athletically.
The hips are surrounded by large, low velocity, high power muscles. That is in contrast to the smaller, high velocity, but low power muscles of your extremities. The hips are the key to every powerful athletic movement that I can think of. A jab just isn’t a solid jab without a twist of the hips. And you can forget about throwing a solid cross or roundhouse kick without the hips.
When you swing a baseball bat, the power comes from planting your feet and driving through the hips, not from the arms. Same with a golf swing. A quarterback heaving the ball 50 yards. Sprinting. Jumping. Lifting a heavy object off the floor. Basically, strong hips enable the body to move powerfully and efficiently.
Stephan at Whole Health Source summed it up very nicely with his post The Seat of Power (he should also be commended for using the word “buttocks” 9 times):
In any full-body movement, the hips are the central source of power. The strongest muscles surround the hips, and muscle strength diminishes progressively as you move further from them. A shapely buttocks is typically a strong buttocks, and a strong buttocks generally means a strong person. So if you want to decide at a glance whether a person is capable of sprinting and jumping after large prey, and then carrying it home, the buttocks is a good place to look.
So start checking out butts and you’ll be able to tell just how athletically capable a person is. Guys, “I was just checking out your athletic abilities” is unlikely to work with the ladies though. But if you find one that it does work with, she’s a keeper.
Which Muscles Comprise The Hip Joint?
If you’re not interested in a quick anatomy lesson, skip to the next section; otherwise, read on. There are four groups of muscles – known as the Gluteals, Adductors, Iliopsoas, and Lateral Rotators – made up of a total of 18 muscles that can cause movement about the hip joint.
The Gluteals are comprised of four muscles, the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, gluteus minimus, and tensor fasciae latae. The medius and minimus help to move the legs away from the midline of the body (abduction) and stabilize the pelvis when one foot is off the ground, while the maximus is primarily responsible for extending the hip.
The Adductors are a group of five muscles, known as the adductor brevis, adductor longus, adductor magnus, pectineus, and gracilis. Collectively, they pull the legs towards the midline of the body, originating on the pubic bone and connecting to the femur at intervals, brevis being the shortest and magnus the longest. The pectineus aids in adduction, along with helping to turn the hip inward.
The three muscles of the Iliopsoas are the iliacus and psoas major and minor. The Iliopsoas are part of the hip flexor group, a collection of muscles responsible for moving the upper thigh towards the torso, or vice versa. The other muscles making up the hip flexors are the pectineus and adductor brevis and longus from the Adductors, the sartorius, the rectus femoris (part of the quadriceps), and the tensor fasciae latae of the Gluteals. An interesting fact: 40% of people don’t have a psoas minor.
Finally, there are six muscles known as Lateral Rotators: the externus and internus obturators, piriformis, superior and inferior gemellis, and quadratus femoris. These muscles do just as the name says; forming a fan-shape around the side of the hip, they rotate the thigh away from the midline of the body, as well as help to extend the hip.
The Hip’s Inaction
Let’s look at this from the opposite angle. We know what function strong hips perform. Basically any full-body movement involves transference of power through the hips. That can be as easy as getting up off the couch to get another bag of Doritos or as difficult as picking up a barbell loaded with three times your bodyweight. But other than diminished athletic ability, do weak hips cause any major issues?
Think of how many people you know with either knee or lower back pain. Considering that your average person has tight hip flexors and weak glutes from sitting all day, along with poor rotation in the hip joint, where do you think we should start when looking for a root cause? Do you think weak muscles in the hip complex could be causing any of that? Given that the hips are the basis of powerful athletic movements, I bet there’s quite a case to be made for them being the basis of pain in the lower extremities.
Long distance runners, many of whom do little other than run, often have weak abductors in relation to their adductors. Weak abductors are commonly implicated in runner’s knee, or chondromalacia. Tight hip flexors cause the pelvis to tilt, which leads to lower back pain. Imbalanced musculature within the hips can cause the knees to track improperly and can also lead to improper foot striking. Needless to say, the hips have a bit of importance in your ability to get around.
Are Your Hips Weak?
One tip I’ve read for diagnosing your hip flexor flexibility, or lack thereof, is to see how your pants align front to back, looking from the side. If your waistband rests lower in the front than in the rear, this is a sign of tight hip flexors and possibly weak glutes and hamstrings. The opposite, a rarity, indicates tightness in the hamstrings and glutes and weakness in the hip flexors.
Another good test is to just squat. The squat is probably the best diagnostic tool there is for seeing how a person moves. Have someone watch you and notice if you are able to maintain a proper lordotic arch below parallel of a squat. If not, you are probably tight in the hamstrings and glutes. Do your knees cave in when coming out of the bottom? Look for imbalances between your abductors and adductors.
And surely you’ve seen that “tucked tail” look where the tailbone is driven forward, basically making a flat run from lower back straight into hamstrings. It’s the classic look of the elderly gentleman with a serious case of Noassatall. It’s also a hallmark of lack of power in the gluteal muscles, the gluteus maximus being one of the strongest muscles in the body (THE strongest depending on which source you consult).
Developing The Hip Muscles
Hopefully by now you’re convinced of the importance of the hips in not just being a stud athlete, but also in just getting around in daily life. And now we’re ready to look at several ways to get the muscles of the hips firing properly. For starters, let’s look at some things that are certainly not going to help. I can promise that the adductor and abductor machines (otherwise known as “good girl” and “bad girl” machines, respectively) that the women at the gym love are not going to get things moving the right way. Just as you wouldn’t strengthen your quads by doing leg extensions (please tell me you don’t!), we aren’t looking to isolate the hip muscles, but to use them in the manner in which they’ve evolved, i.e., together.
Further, lots of running isn’t going to get it done and will likely exacerbate any issues. Here are some exercises that I find to be excellent for developing the oh-so-important musculature around the hips. Most of you are probably already doing several or all of these on a regular basis, but for those that aren’t, why not?
One thing you’ll notice is that I’m focusing predominantly on the posterior chain of the glutes and hamstrings. That’s because most people are deficient in these areas and the hip flexors are already tight enough. Properly performing these exercises is well beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that there are plenty of people out there know what to look for.
- Low Bar Back Squat – We all know that the squat is the king of building muscle. If you are lifting for strength, you are doing squats. If you aren’t doing squats, you aren’t very serious about getting stronger. But why do I specify the low bar version specifically? The low bar squat targets the posterior chain better than the Olympic version of the squat, along with getting some effort from the Adductors. I particularly like the Westside Barbell approach for rep schemes with Dynamic Effort days of 50-60% of max weight moved as quickly as possible and Maximum Effort days to really load up the weight. This increases the strength of the posterior chain, then fires it very quickly to increase power development.
- Deadlift – The other major muscle-building lift, the deadlift, is also great for involving the Glutes and Adductors. The hamstrings get involved here too. Notice that the hamstrings and glutes tend to work synergistically. I can’t think of any movements, other than a leg curl, that isolate either of these muscles.
- Glute-Ham Raise – These are incredibly difficult, probably the hardest exercise for your posterior chain, but are great for building the…glutes and hamstrings. It’s entirely likely you won’t be able to do this immediately, but you can do them assisted like this.
No excuses about lacking equipment either; they can be done on the floor with help.
- Good Morning – Glutes, Adductors, and hamstrings again. Are you catching a pattern here?
- Clean – Unparalleled for building power in the entire body. Let’s watch Natalie Woolfolk perform a nice Clean and Jerk. Notice around the 7 or 8-second mark where she rebends her knees to get under the bar, then fully extends the hips. That powerful hip extension is the key to the Clean and is the only reason people are able to heft multiples of their bodyweight from floor to chest and then overhead.
No doubt there are tons of great ways to hammer the muscles around your hips. Lunges, stiff-leg deadlifts, split squats, one-leg squats, the list goes on. But these are five that are easy enough to perform, don’t require any equipment other than a bar, and are powerfully potent in their ability to make you stronger and more powerful.
How do you diagnose muted hip function in yourself or trainees? What exercises do you do to keep these muscles strong?
About Scott
Scott Kustes loves to cook and loves to eat. He started Real Food University to help you get maximum enjoyment out of the meals that you eat. To find out more about how he has rebelled against the fast food culture and counting calories or carbs, join the Real Food Revolution.
34 Reader Comments
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Scott – thanks for this: very thorough. As a long time squatter I recently started getting into one-leg stuff which I notice you also mention – I can thoroughly recommend trying these, as they feel like a way to build a really solid all-round foundation below the waist.
So what was the inability to lie thing all about? YouTube tells me I can’t watch the video where I live…
Nathan, consider yourself spared. It was a link to Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” video. It served no purpose other than to give you something fun to look at while wanting to jab pencils into your eardrums.
Cheers
Scott
Um, can you give a discription of what a “low bar back squat” is?
I’m a back-centric trainer, since most people are so overdeveloped in the front. A steady diet of hip extensions, trap bar deads, and technique wall squats solves this.
Best,
Skyler
Jo, See this article and search Google for “low bar back squat”.
Cheers
Scott
Good questions.
The kettlebell swing takes care of all of these issues. It promotes hip flexor flexibility and posterior chain health.
Bob O.
I was squatting the other day, less than a week after my first powerlifting contest, and I felt something give in my lower back/hip area. It’s now become hard to move after I put pressure on the area from sitting or lying down. It seems to be a bone/joint problem. Any ideas?
And what do you think could have caused this in the squat? I still love squatting and deadlifting, and would like to resume them once I heal over. I keep replaying the actions in my head but I can’t figure out what I did wrong with my forum.
Hi,
I have done some distance running and boxing to a semi serious level and your description of the consequences of weak abductors in relation to adductors sounds like something I have been suffering from.
I would not say I lack ass at all but my right foot swings out to the side a little when I run which I have been told may be due to a weak or damaged abductor for my previous experience as a kickboxer.
My left hamstring is tighter than my right although when i was younger it used to be the other way around. This changed one night when i strained it while swinging my left leg up vertically in the air while rushing to warm up for a bout with little time.
I have also suffered from pain in my left knee although with the introduction of a passive stretch exercise (lying on floor with knees up and bent at right angles)which seems to temporarily ease my lower back tightness this has not been a problem for a while.
However I’d like more techniques to deal with this so I can return to being more active with minimum discomfort.
My Q is if what is likely to be the cause of my problem is weak abductors (or one weak abductor) in relation to my adductors then why in your description of the exercises you list here do you list techniques which target the adductors but do not mention the abductors?
Would I be right in introducing the exercises you recommend here or are they likely to be inappropriate for me?
Thanks,
Sharla
[...] immediately go read Developing Hip Function to discover how your hips work and what exercises strengthen them. If I had read this article a [...]
Scott,
Awesome Video…
“And I’m on tonight
You know my hips don’t lie
And I’m starting to feel it’s right
All the attraction, the tension
Don’t you see baby, this is perfection”
I thought I was suppose to be the one posting the cheesy Youtube videos on my site. You are suppose to be the intellectual. Common buddy
“I never really knew that she could dance like this
She makes a man want to speak Spanish
Como se llama (si), bonita (si), mi casa (si, Shakira Shakira), su casa
Shakira, Shakira”
I don’t care what anyone says. She has major talent!
Rusty
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I like this article. I’m interested in teaching phrases/semantics. I’ve found that “driving through the hip” is not very effective when teaching. It also gives the idea that the power move is originated at the hip. It is not. With most power moves (javelin throw, throw, discus, golf swing, baseball swing), the power is *initiated* via torque generated by the rotation of the connected lower limb first.
This rotation creates impetus for the hip. The hip then separates from the upper torso. The dynamism created is the “stretch reflex”.
The power of the stretch reflex can be illustrated by showing the student your hand placed flat on a table. You raise an index finger and slap it back to the table surface as fast/ hard as possible. You ask: “How powerful is this”? The student evaluates. Then you take the tip of your finger with your free hand and pull it back. When you release it, it’s stored energy sends the finger much faster (like a stretched rubber band) into the table. You ask: what about THIS?
This is the goal when creating a stretch reflex. I’ve found that NOT overemphasizing the hip movement, and instead talking about the connected events as a whole helps people learn faster.
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Hey Scott,
Good article, I’m all for bringing into the light the necessity of hip/posterior chain dominant training due to our anterior dominant lifestyles.
As this has been a STRONG focus of mine for a while now as a trainer, do u mind if I jump in on a couple of these? Feel free to block me or tell me piss off if u feel I’m out of line, or too wordy.
First, the statement about most people having WEAK hips is absolutely true. However, that priority should be given to immediately improving stength before developing MOBILITY is debateable without individual assessment (refer to Gray Cook – Mobility, then Stability, then Function).
Worth acknowledging that lack of MOBILITY at the hip will result in mobility – i.e. loss of stability – at the lumbar spine.
So inability to flex at the hip (usually weak psoas/illiacus) will result in a compensation of lumbar flexion. Can’t hip extend? (weak glutes). You’ll get lumbar extension. Can’t internally/externally rotate at the hip? (numerous factors) You’ll be left with lumbar rotation (BAD!!).
So, while the exercises you’ve outlined are all top notch exercises in developing a balance of mobility/stability (or force couples, if you prefer) I think they are all exercises that people should ASPIRE to be performing after an AGRESSIVE REHABILITIVE PHASE (even if you’re asymptometic, it’s still rehabilitive in nature as we are aiming to improve faulty movement patterns), and after reading some of the above questions, I think a lot of people will fall into this category.
I’d stongly advise most people to take an ego check, and possibly even head back to some floor exercise to get started. Can you glute bridge without lumbar compensation for 20 perfect reps with a solid 2 second hold at the top? What about 10 reps with a 10 second hold? Single leg glute bridge with a tennis ball in the crook of your opposite hip (aka Cook hip lift) for 10 reps per side – without assymetries?
I’d be making damn sure you can do these proficiently before LB squatting and Olympic lifitng…and that’s from someone who LOVES Olympic lifting and squatting!!
Hit these aggressively – alternate with a hip flexor strech and aim for 5 sets, 3 x daily. With that type of aggressive approach I’ve had clients move through each phase WEEKLY, from suffering back and/or knee pain & not being able to correctly bridge, to being able to deadlift beautifully in 6 weeks. A bilateral hip extension progression for example may look this:
Wk 1: Double leg glute bridge. Wk 2: Single leg glute bridge. Wk 3: Hip thrust. Wk 4: Kneeling deadlift. Wk 5: Rack/Pin Pull. Wk 6: Conventional deadlift.
Again, boot me off here if u want Scott. But I wouldn’t mind offering some advice to some of the questions above on next post.
@ Bob O: KB swings are generally awesome. Again though, some people may need prerequisite work first.
@ Hammad: Unlikely to be a problem with your squat mate. Or at least, not that particluar squat, at that partcular time. Likely the straw that broke the camel’s back.
You’ve likely been compensating in a movement pattern for a while, as I mentioned above. Most likely weeks, months or even years leading up to that injury. Not just one bad squat. I’d recommend u get someone who know’s what they’re doing to assess u, and perhaps be open to the idea of going back a few steps and rebuilding the foundations.
@ Sharla: The right foot swinging out is very likely due to a functional limb length difference. Could be related to a whole host of other things. Some, seemingly unrelated. It’ll likely go hand in hand with a lateral pelvic tilt.
Again, I’d suggest get it properly assessed.
But in the meantime I’d be willing to bet that you could get much relief from your knee pain by incorporating some simple soft tissue work (foam rolling etc) to your adductors and calves, and adding some glute activation drills as I mentioned above.
Also, I’d be careful with the stretch you mentioned you are using for your low back. Essentially, you are gaining relief by stretching the spinal erectors through lumbar flexion. Relief will be temporary only. Compensation will be long term. I’d strongly encourage you to avoid stretching the lower back immediately (lumbar spine needs stability, NOT mobility!). Get some THORACIC extension (NOT lumbar extension!) by arching over a foam roll, and as Scott’s article says – get your hips working! This will dramatically improve your hip abduction issue too. You don’t necessarily need specific abduction exercises. Your glutes are also external rotators. Try this:
Stand in front of a full length mirror. I’ll wager that your knees are pointing in a little, and therefore the arch of your feet are flattening. Now squeeze your butt cheeks as hard you can and watch what happens at the knees and feet. They turn back out to neutral, right? There’s your abduction. So, get your butt working!
I hope this helps and cetainly don’t mean to hijack this post. I’m a long time reader and very rare poster. Just though I could help a few people out with this.
Cheers,
Will.
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