Strong and mobile hips can absolutely make or break your performance, and play an instrumental role in how your body feels. This week coach Lee Boyce and I are collaborating and are providing you with 8 of our top hip strengthening exercises. Enjoy!
#1) Hip Mobility/Psoas Strengthener V-Sit Position
This exercise strengthens the psoas muscles, and improves hip controlled mobility. This exercise is MUCH tougher than it looks.
Coaching Tips:
- Sit on the floor. Your head, torso and hips should be in a stacked position. Fully extend both of your knees, and plantar-flex your feet.
- Place two kettlebells or other objects on the floor and so they are on the inside of your lower legs.
- While keeping your knees fully extended, ankles in a fixed position, and feet plantarflexed, lift your feet and lower legs over the kettlebells in a lateral direction, and then back to the starting position.
- For the duration of the exercise, do not allow your legs or feet to strike the kettlebells, or for your legs or feet to touch the floor.
- For the duration of the exercise, do not allow your lower back to hyperextend or flex laterally, ribcage to flare, torso, spine or hips to rotate, or weight to shift from hip to hip. Some minor spinal flexion is ok.
- Aside from the legs, the rest of your body should remain in a fixed position.
- In terms of breathing, do what works and feels best for you.
#2) Psoas Glute Bridge (AKA Tennis Ball Glute Bridge)
This exercise is great to hit the psoas, which is a deep hip flexor that becomes very active in high knee or greater flexion positions. Using a tennis ball, lacrosse ball, or even a “peanut” like I am is perfectly fine.
Coaching Tips:
- The point of the movement is to achieve as much hip extension as possible while keeping the ball tucked into the hip fold, as seen in the video. That means squeezing hard on to the ball with the thigh of the raised leg. It’s usually quite surprising to a lifter with just how much this challenge affects their ability to extend the hips.
- As a bonus, this makes the glute on the supporting leg work much harder also.
- If the ball slips out easily, it’s an indicator that you likely have some work to do in strengthening the psoas muscles, and this drill can help in and of itself.
- Once you’ve mastered full hip flexion when combined with single leg hip extension, you can put money on it that your pelvis will be bionic for movements like split squats, deadlifts, and squats.
#3) Standing Psoas March Hold With Hanging Band + Kettlebell
This exercise strengthens the psoas muscles. This exercise also strengthens the muscles in the foot and lower leg, and improves balance.
Coaching Tips:
- Hang a kettlebell from a medium to high tension resistance band, and place the band over your knee.
- Stand on one foot, and have a slight bend in your knee. Your head, torso and hips should be in a stacked position.
- Form a tripod base by placing your weight on the back portion of your foot, and keep your toes down, particularly your big and baby toes. These parts of your foot should remain in contact with the floor for the duration of the exercise. Pretend you are suctioning or screwing your foot to the ground.
- Use your psoas muscle and bring your other leg up so your thigh is at least parallel to the ground. Maintain this position for the duration of the set.
- For the duration of the exercise, do not allow your lower back to hyperextend or round, ribcage to flare, torso, spine or hips to rotate, or body to lean to the side. Your hips should remain in a level position (I love to use the water glass analogy).
- Do not allow your knee to fall inside or outside of your foot. Maintain the tripod base for the duration of the set.
- In terms of breathing, do what works and feels best for you.
#4) Band Resisted “Switch and Hold”
This exercise places plenty of dynamic responsibility on the hip flexors – especially the psoas due to the high knee positions being held. Because of its level of advancement, it’s very important that the right emphasis toward the hips is maintained, and that comes from achieving the right body position.
Coaching Tips:
- As you’ll see, the trailing leg is extended straight behind the body, with the hips tucked in.
- The knee of the raised leg remains tucked, so that it’s not held at an angle greater than 90 degrees.
- All of this will keep the hip flexors as the dominant muscle group being used, and not convert efforts to the quads or abs.
- Using a loop band like @coachnickt ‘s NT Loops works great, but this can be done with any looped band that also suits your level of capability.
- Use a machine to lean into for stability, and use the legs to their full potential.
- Focusing on sets of 16-20 switch-and-holds is a good place to start.
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#5) Hanging Psoas Marches + Single Kettlebell Resistance
This exercise strengthens the psoas muscles, improves shoulder and scapular stability, grip strength, and lumbo-pelvic stability.
Coaching Tips:
- Hold a kettlebell on one foot (put your foot through the horn), and dorsiflex your foot.
- Grab onto a bar, and adopt your preferred hand width and positioning.
- Adopt a relatively hollow body position.
- Use the muscles in your mid and upper back and draw your shoulder blades together and down (bring each shoulder blade in towards the spine and down towards the opposite hip). Do not execute the movement with your arms. Hold this position for the duration of the set.
- Your elbows should be close to fully extended, but not hyperextended.
- Before you go, take a deep breath in through your nose (360 degrees of air around your spine). Now contract your anterior core muscles as hard as you can, slowly bring one knee up so your thigh is at least parallel to the floor. Return to the starting position.
- Perform the target number of reps and repeat using the opposite side.
- Maintain control for 100% of the movement.
- For the duration of the exercise, do not allow your lower back to hyperextend or round, ribcage to flare, or torso, spine or hips to rotate. Your hips should remain in a level position.
- Keep the leg on the non-working side in a fixed position, and with the knee fully extended, and foot dorsifiexed.
- Aside from the moving leg, the rest of your body should remain in a fixed position.
- In terms of breathing, do what works and feels best for you.
#6) Half Kneeling Psoas Knee Raise
It can be surprising just how little activation a lifter has in the psoas muscle group when it’s broken down to isolation, and this exercise does just that.
Coaching Tips:
- Taking a knee, bracing against a wall, and raising the front leg as high as possible without compensations or “kicking forward” with the leading leg can be very telling as far as true hip strength, as one of the following compromises tend to happen:
- The pelvic posture goes awry. The pelvis tucks under and the movement loses its hip dominance.
- The front foot drifts forward, making the quads do more work than the hips
- For this movement, keep the foot dorsiflexed, keep a 90 degree joint angle on the front leg, and stay tall. It helps to contract the glute on the trailing leg for better positioning and tightness.
- This movement works well as its own exercise, OR as an activation tool for other exercises that require a stable pelvis and pelvic floor (think squats, split squats, deadlifts, and other big stuff).
- Focus on sets of 10-20 slow and controlled reps per leg.
#7) Prone Band Resisted Psoas Marches + Protraction On Stability Ball
This exercise strengthens the psoas muscles, improves lumbo-pelvic stability, and shoulder and scapular stability.
Coaching Tips:
- Place a resistance band around your feet.
- Place your hands on a stability ball. Your shoulders should be roughly above your hands. Spread your hands and pretend you are suctioning them to the ball.
- Your body should be in a straight line from your head to heels.
- Before each rep, take a deep breath in (360 degree breath around your spine), brace your core (360 degree brace around your spine), and tuck your ribs towards your hips (close the space in your midsection).
- Now lift one foot off the floor and bring your knee in towards your torso. Return your leg and foot to the starting position with control.
- Reset and repeat using the opposite leg, or perform all reps on the same side before switching legs.
- Do not mindlessly hang out. Press your body away from the roller and protract your shoulder blades (move away from spine and around the ribcage).
- For the duration of the exercise, do not allow your lower back to hyperextend or excessively round, ribcage to flare, or torso, spine or hips to rotate. Do not allow your torso or hips to drop. Your torso and hips should remain square to the floor.
- Aside from the leg that is performing the “march,” the rest of your body should remain in a relatively fixed position.
- In terms of breathing, do what works and feels best for you.
#8) Sprinting
We would be remiss to forget the truth that there are few exercises in the typical athletic/training world that directly work the psoas – a deep hip flexor that’s mostly responsible for, well, deep hip flexion. We can talk about deep squats, but that only hits them eccentrically. This series has shown innovative, underused movements that are worth their weight in gold, but one very common and easily accessible thing to do to hit these muscles is well executed SPRINT work.
Coaching Tips:
We all know what sprinting is (running your ass off!) – so let’s make sure you’re following these keys to performing good quality technique:
- Keep the head straight and eyes down the track. No bobbleheading!
- Remember: Arm speed dictates leg speed. Use a full arm swing, and avoid too much movement across the body with the arms. Pump them hard and fully, aiming for “cheek to cheek” (face to butt) with the hand. This will encourage the next point.
- Get your knees up. Nothing is worse than being a shuffler when sprinting. Open up your stride by picking the knee up high on every stride. It may feel awkward at first.
- Dorsiflex the foot when it’s off the ground. This will be the hardest cue to master, but it’s important. Once you have your toes up highest, your foot will be more likely to strike the right way when it hits the ground, and help propel you along, rather than chip into the ground and block you prematurely.
- Stay tall. Avoid “sitting down” when in motion. This will maximize your stride length, stride frequency, and core involvement.
- Focus on shorter sprints to start, and always leave one gear in the tank. You’re not training for the Olympics. 😉
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