We all hear it: “hinge at your hips” whenever you are working out at the gym. Why does everyone harp on this one movement? Here is the thing…it is a crucial movement for the functionality of our bodies. But do you know why?
The hip hinge’s biomechanics involve the posterior chain muscles. This includes your glutes, hamstrings, and lower back muscles. This chain of muscles is very strong and powerful. The movement also challenges the stability of the hips and the flexibility of your muscles. Mastering the hip hinge not only elevates your athletic performance, but also serves as a foundation in injury prevention. You use the hip hinge in so many functional movements performed every day. By utilizing these large muscle groups and moving as your body is intended, you are setting yourself up for success. You are setting the stage to allowing your body to move freely and strongly in the future. This post will review the benefits of the hip hinge movement, proper execution and common mistakes to avoid, and real life application to give your body a solid foundation and reduce injury risk.
Take me straight to learning how to hinge!
**This is not medical advice. Please consult your medical provider for more information.
The Benefits of Mastering the Hip Hinge
By prioritizing this fundamental movement, you are able to unlock powerful athletic performance and execution of daily tasks without sacrificing your physical health. Injuries can sideline us, even when we are doing what seems to be the most simplest of tasks. Ever feel your low back go out after reaching to grab something your dropped on the ground? Have you woken up to stretch and all of a sudden, your lats or low back cramp and now you’ve got this dull ache the rest of the day? Or the dreaded moving day…you lift once with bad form because you were either tired or not thinking and now, you can’t physically move and your family move is delayed unless you find backup.
The hip hinge technique is the ultimate foundation of functional movement, strength training, and injury prevention. At the heart of this movement lies core and glute strength which ties together the integrity and overall strength of the entire posterior chain. This catalyzes powerlifting performance while also mitigating the risk of lower back issues, an all too common occurrence in today’s sedentary lifestyle.
What is Needed to Master the Hip Hinge
As discussed early, the hip hinge involves the posterior chain musculature. This includes the hamstrings, glutes, erector spinae, and lats. Core strength is also needed to stabilize the spine and pelvis. Everything must work efficiently together to pull off this important movement.
- Hamstring length: You must have appropriate hamstring length. If you bend at your hips to reach for the ground and you feel a strong pulling stretch in your hamstrings, you have some work to do.
- Core engagement: You need to learn to properly utilize your deep core to stabilize your spine and pelvis.
- Posterior chain strength: Strength is a requirement in the hamstrings, glutes, erector spinae, and the lats, especially if you are lifting up weight.
- Body awareness: You need to be able to maintain a neutral spine and remember to initiate the movement from your hips, both from a standing position and from the lowest point when you are standing back up.
Incorporating hip mobility and hamstring flexibility exercises can help break down the hip hinge movements. If you struggle with the hip hinge movement, try breaking down the movements even further before piecing them all together. More on this later.
Common Mistakes
One of the most frequent mistakes with the hip hinge is not actually moving from the hips. Instead, individuals tend to initiate the movement from their spine. That is, they bend forward towards the ground by rounding their spine first. Not only does this place increased stress on the spine, but it directly avoids movement at the hips.
This leads to the next common mistake which is avoiding hinging at the hips. The whole point of the hip hinge is to use the mobility and strength of the hip muscles to perform this functional movement. There are many different compensations for this, but they all go back to not initiating the movement from the hips and avoiding the majority of the movement of come from the hips. You need to effectively learn to move at your hips and segmentally separate them from the spine.
Again, another compensation for lacking motion at the hips, but either bending the knees too much or too little will inhibit the effectiveness of your hip hinge movement. Yes, your knees will bend. But, they will bend because you are bending at your hips. Your knees will then be forced to indirectly bend. Initiating movement from your knees results in a quad dominant movement pattern. The whole idea of the hip hinge is to incorporate a hip dominant movement pattern.
In the end, a lot of this comes down to body awareness and body mechanics. These movements can all be learned. You just have to put in the practice and consistency to reteach your body to move in the way it was intended to.
How to Hip Hinge
The hip hinge is a fundamental movement pattern critical for a multitude of activities. Anytime you are picking up groceries, picking up a golf ball, or performing a deadlift at the gym, you are implementing a hip hinge.
In the hip hinge, your hips act as the fulcrum (the supporting point for a lever) while your body acts as the lever. You bend at your hips while maintaining a neutral spine.
Try this: stand in front of a wall with the backside of your body facing the wall. Stand about 6-12 inches from the wall. While keeping your spine straight, send your hips backwards. Pretend you are going to sit on the toilet. Your knees are allowed to bend when you are doing this. Keep moving until your butt touches the wall. To stand back up, initiate the movement from your hips. Send you hips forward to stand instead of trying to stand by lifting your chest. If you lead with your chest, you tend to want to overuse your back muscles. This is the hip hinge.
Refining Your Hip Hinge Technique
Refining your hip hinge technique requires a blend of patience, consistency, and an understanding of body mechanics. Remember what we reviewed earlier about what you need to master the hip hinge? This is where this is going to come into play.
In order to advance your hip hinge, you need to break down the pieces of the movement. You can start to develop those skills/areas more and then learn to piece it back together to complete the entirety of the hip hinge movement. Lets start with hamstring flexibility. Stand with your knees straight and bend forward trying to reach your hands to your toes. If you can reach your hands to the front of your ankles without bending your knees, this is an acceptable hamstring length. However, if you come up short, you need to work on stretching those hamstrings. A great guide to follow to improve your hamstring flexibility can be found here!
Core engagement is another piece of the puzzle. Utilizing your deep core helps protect your spine and gives your body a solid foundation to work from. Your deep core is what we are going for when we talk about core engagement. This is different from the “six-pack abs” everyone always thinks about. Your deep core includes your transverse abdominis muscle. This muscle lies deep to the rectus abdominis (the six-pack muscle) and wraps around to your low back. This is why it is so crucial to learn proper core engagement. When done correctly, it stabilizes your spine and your pelvis. I go over exactly how to engage your core step-by-step in this post here. This can be used not just for your hip hinge, but for almost anything you do in your daily routine!
Finally, making sure you are working on posterior chain strength and activation is essential. The bottom line is that you need strength to be able to perform powerful movements. The great thing about this is that performing variations of the hip hinge is exactly what will strengthen these posterior chain muscles! If you need any ideas on exercises to do this want a full workout reviewed hip hinge movements, drop a comment down below.
Progressing Your Movement and Building Strength
When working on the strengthening aspect of this fundamental movement, the most basic movement that everyone is familiar with is the hip thrust. The hip thrust exercise is essentially a hip hinge when done correctly. You can start with adding weight or progressing from a double limb hip thrust to a single limb hip thrust.
Squats are also movements incorporating the hip hinge. If you are rehabbing an injury or wanting to start off slow, incorporating box squats can be a good first step. Box squats are just like a normal squat except you sit on a box (or bench) at the bottom of your movement before standing back up. I like to use these when working with clients because the box gives a clear “target” to send your hips back to. It is an easy cue to get the correct movement of the hips. Once you become more proficient, you can easily take the box away and try to mimic the movement from memory without the target.
All variations of deadlifts include the hip hinge. The double limb and single limb RDLs are one of my favorites because they really work eccentric strength and flexibility of the hamstrings. This is something that most people lack and commonly leads to hamstring injuries. Try to incorporate different deadlift variations to keep progressing your hip hinge technique.
Remember, the journey to refining your hip hinge isn’t instantaneous. Each phase of your progression builds upon the last. By embracing the incremental nature of strength training, you set the stage for a strong and resilient posterior chain.
Avoiding Injury: Safety Tips
Utilizing the hip hinge is more than just enhancing athletic performance or lifting heavier weight with your deadlift. Fundamentally, it’s about protecting your low back and ensuring the longevity of your body. At the core, the hip hinge teaches proper force distribution and how to utilize the larger and stronger muscles in the body. This helps prevent injury by not overusing smaller, and thus, weaker muscles and maintaining proper body alignment to limit stress to vulnerable areas of the body.
When working on your hip hinge, remember to start off slow. Learn the movement first without weight and in a small range of motion. Master the basics before moving on. Slowly increase your depth. Slowly start adding on weight. This is a process and it will take time. If you try to jump straight in to a deadlift at 100lbs and you have never even learned how to properly execute a hip hinge, you are most likely going to injure yourself.
While strength is an important concept with progressing your hip hinge, remember not to neglect mobility. Take time to stretch and cool down, especially as we age. You might have been able to get away with avoiding your stretching and cool down in your 20s. You need to learn to start incorporating it if you haven’t already done so.
And as always, practice makes perfect. This is a foundational movement. You can never go wrong with practicing the basics of the movement.
Real-life Applications of the Hip Hinge
It is very easy to incorporate the hip hinge throughout your daily activities. Working on your hinge form can actually be done throughout your day anytime you perform a functional movement; you don’t have to always set time aside. Working it into your day will take a conscious effort and might take you a bit more time if you weren’t actually thinking about what you are doing, but believe me, its easier than you think.
Here is a list of activities you do daily/weekly that you can practice your hip hinge form without carving out extra time:
- grabbing the groceries from the shopping cart
- picking up your child
- reaching for the pot in the bottom cupboard
- sorting clothes for the laundry
- using a golfer’s pick-up to grab your golf ball
- performing deadlifts, squats, and kettlebell swings in the gym
- gardening
The sheer functionality of this movement extends from daily activities to sport-specific training. This emphasis shifts from isolated movements to comprehensive, functional movements that prepare us for the rigors of sports and daily life alike. It encourages us to view the hip hinge not just as a component of our workouts, but as a fundamental movement pattern integral to our physical composition and wellbeing. The real-life applications of the hip hinge highlight its essential role in fostering a life of functional and dynamic mobility and strength.
Other Related Articles on Glute Strength, Activation, & Performance
- The Science Behind Why Glute Activation is Important
- Best Gluteus Medius Exercises for Athletes
- Want to Increase Your Squat Depth? Learn From a PT
- Why Strength Training for Runners is Important
- The Benefits of Sprinting: Fitness, Mentality, and Overall Health
TL;DR
Mastering the hip hinge is essential for safe, efficient movement in both workouts and daily life. It helps build strength, protect the lower back, and improve posture. This post reviews how to perform the hip hinge correctly and safe progressions of the movement for long-term results. With the right technique, you can reduce injury risk and move more powerfully in real-life tasks like lifting and squatting.
