Training Hips to Relieve Back Pain, Build Glutes, and more

The hip flexors are a group of muscles located right along the front of the hips/pelvis. Spending too much time in a seated posture can lead to shortened, weak hip flexors.

Do you struggle with lower back pain, hip cramping or tight hamstrings? Do you struggle to engage your core? Training hip flexors might help.

The hip flexors are a group of muscles located on the front of your hips / pelvic bone. You’ll feel them engage when do things like draw your knee up towards your chest from the ground. They’re also in a shortened state when in a seated position.

Many people think that since hip are tight, they need to be stretched rather than strengthened. Really, they usually need to be stretched AND strengthened. A muscle can feel tight because its only strong through a very limited range of motion.

Many people with desk jobs spend the majority of their day seated. As a result, they have tight hips. This tightness feels uncomfortable, but whats even more concerning is its potential to result in pain and injury in surrounding areas.

In this post, I’ll cover some anatomy to help you understand why this is important, provide a simple test you can perform to see if you need to train hips, and present some exercises to start incorporating today.

Part 1: Why hip strength is important

Anatomy

Understanding the anatomy of the hip flexor muscle group might help one to understand why hip flexors can be both too tight and too weak.

The most fundamental thing to understand is that there is no one muscle called the hip flexor! Rather, the hip flexors are a group of muscles. There are five muscles that assist in hip flexion:

There is no one muscle called a “hip flexor”

• TFL (Tensor Facia Latae)

• Rectus Femoris (also a quad muscle!)

• Iliacus

• Sartorius

• Psoas

We can break these further down into two groups - the set that insert themselves at a low point in the outer part of the hip bone and the set that insert themselves higher - up the lumbar spine.

Hip flexors with a lower insertion point in the hip bone

• TFL

• Rectus Femoris

• Sartorius

Since they insert themselves in the hip, these are muscles that can only help us raise our knees to hip level. These are typically the disproportionately tight hip flexor muscles.

Hip flexors with a higher insertion point in the lumbar spine

• Psoas

• Iliacus

Because of their higher insertion point, these muscles are the ones that can help us raise our knees above hip level. They also work to stabilize and flex the spine, which is super important - we all want a stable lower back! These are typically under trained hip flexor muscles.

Now you know that these two hip flexor muscles tie into our lumbar spine, it might be easier to understand why hip weakness and tightness are so directly linked to lower back pain.

If our pelvis tilts forward (due to weak abdominal muscles and tight/weak hips), our hip flexors become overly tight while our spine becomes overly mobile. Tight hip flexors also mean that the glutes will have difficulty engaging.

Our spine should be stable in the lumbar region. If our hips are tight and weak, our lumbar spine will begin to compensate and become excessively mobile (bending and arching a lot). This can lead to lower back pain and a series of other issues.

Good Posture - hip flexors are extended, glutes are engaged, and ribs are stacked directly above the pelvis. Lumbar spine is slightly extended - a natural low back curve.

Common bad posture - hips shortened, glutes and core disengaged. Excessive low back curvature/extension.

Additional Benefits

Relieve hip flexor cramping

If only a few of your hip flexors are strong, those few will do the work that should be spread amongst all of the muscles involved in hip flexion. As a result, they become overused. This will result in hip flexor cramping and quad overuse. Relying too heavily on quad strength to raise knees up in day to day activities like running and climbing stairs may eventually lead to a pulled quad muscle!

Relieve hamstring tightness

All the muscles in our body are connected, so tightness in one muscle can result in a sort of chain reaction. Indirectly, hamstrings will become overly tight when the hip flexors are not trained properly.

This is essentially a result of the following sequence of events:

1. tight/weak hip flexors —> inhibited (or undertrained and underused) glutes. Glutes should be the primary hip extensor, or the muscle responsible for lengthening and opening the hip flexors.

2. weak glutes —> hamstrings taking over the job of extending hips. The hamstrings can act in place of the glutes as they are also a hip extensor. However, the hamstrings do a poor job of this and are not meant to be the primary muscle working.

Build functional core strength

The psoas and iliacus tie into the lumbar spine, making them deep core muscles in addition to hip flexors. Functionally, hips and core can’t be separated from one another as they both should help stabilize the spine. Stabilizing the spine is one of the most important jobs our core does.

Psoas and Iliacus tie into deeper core musculature.

Tight hips make it difficult for us to engage and strengthen the oblique core muscles. For our core to function optimally we need to strengthen our hips! This post isn’t about core, but you can read more about my functional approach to core training here.

Part 2: Hip flexor strength test

Here is a simple test you can do to see if your hip flexors are strong through that whole range of motion:

Place a chair or bench in front of you. It’s important that when you put a foot up on this surface that your knee is at hip level with the thigh/femur parallel to the floor. From this starting position, attempt to lift your foot up and off the surface. Hold your foot there without compromising posture. If you have trouble keeping the knee up above hip level, you might need to focus more on hip flexor strength. If you don’t, still don’t ignore your hips! This will help you maintain more balanced and functional strength as you build strength in other areas like glutes, quads and hamstrings.

Compensating with forward lean, shortened hamstrings

Properly using all hip flexors to raise knee above hip level. Both toes are tracking forward.

Compensating with backward lean, shortened hamstrings

Part 3: Strengthen your hip flexors

In order to build more functional hips and experience all of the benefits we’ve discussed, we want to incorporate exercises that:

• strengthen glutes

• stretch and strengthen  ALL FIVE hip flexors at the full range of motion by emphasizing exercises where knees come above hip level while maintaining a neutral spine

• strengthen core musculature, particularly internal and exernal obliques

Below are some great exercises you can use to build strength in key areas. If you’re new to strength training, try doing 10-12 of each. If you’re more experienced, incorporating some heavier lifts in a lower rep range is also a great idea - particularly for those exercises that don’t require as much balance like the back squat.

Squat, gait, and single leg squat variations

Single leg squat variations will help you to develop balance and stability while training glutes + hips.

• squats

• split squats

• bulgarian split squats

• longer stance lunges
  a longer step in lunges will emphasize glute + posterior chain

• step ups

Hip flexor focused leg and knee raises

• bodyweight hip flexor raises

• weighted hip flexor raises using kettlebells or foot/ankle weights

• hanging leg raises

• L sit holds

Core strength - particularly oblique strength

• side planks

  • side plank hold

  • side plank with leg raise

  • star side plank

• anti rotational core work

  • shoulder tap planks

  • plank rows (advanced!)

Stretches to incorporate

• quad and hip flexor stretches like the couch stretch

• hamstring stretches like this standing table hamstring stretch

Table Hamstring Stretch Demo

Find a elevated surface that puts your leg at a level where you’re able to keep posture similar to what’s shown in the righthand photo. Ideally, you’ll be able to do this with your leg raised up about a 70-90 degrees.

Forward lean compensation leaves hamstrings and hips shortened.

Upright Posture - focus on keeping chest out, glutes squeezed, toes forward. Don’t lean forward until you’ve nailed that!

I hope you learned something! If you aren’t quite sure where to start with all this, book a movement assessment with me. We can spend an hour assessing your movement, then discuss and build a customized plan for you to implement immediately. Check out my training services here!