BY THE OPTIMIST DAILY EDITORIAL TEAM
Have you ever stood up after sitting for too long and felt like your hips aged fifty years out of nowhere? Or maybe you noticed an unexpected twinge while climbing stairs and thought, “Wait, when did that start happening?” You are not alone. Our hips do a lot of work behind the scenes, but as time goes on they make their presence known—sometimes loudly.
As a major connection point between the upper and lower body, the hips play a crucial role in stability, alignment, and movement. When they are weak, other areas—like the lower back and knees—often take on extra strain, which can lead to pain and even injury.
“There’s a huge connection between hip weakness and all of these other injuries,” says physical therapist Lauren Glisic, DPT, CSCS, of Athletic Lab Physical Therapy and Performance Training. Strengthening the hip joint can help you feel stronger and more stable whether you are walking, running, climbing stairs, or simply moving throughout your daily life.
What makes the hip joint unique?
The hip is one of only two ball-and-socket joints in the body, along with the shoulder. However, the hip is far more stable due to its deeper socket, strong ligaments, and supportive muscles like the glutes. “It’s very, very hard to dislocate your hip,” Glisic explains.
Because of its structure, the hip has a wider range of motion than many other joints, allowing the leg to move forward, backward, sideways, and in rotation. “We have so many muscles that contribute to moving the hip joint,” says functional strength coach and yoga instructor Meredith Witte, MSEP, CSCS. The glutes are the biggest players, but there are also the hip flexors, adductors, and stabilizers like the piriformis and tensor fasciae latae, all of which help control motion and maintain balance.
Why are hips so hard to strengthen?
A major reason hip weakness is so common? Our modern lifestyle. So many people spend endless hours sitting at their desks or in their cars, which overstretches our glutes and shortens our hip flexors, making both weak.
Even for those who stay active, daily movement often does not include the full range of motion the hips need. “If you think [about] hunter-gatherer societies, they were moving their hips in all different ways—building fires, hunting, squatting to gather food. Even when resting, they were getting down onto the floor in various positions,” Witte says. “We just don’t do that today.”
Another challenge? Many people struggle to activate their hips properly, allowing other muscles, like the quads or lower back, to take over. “For a lot of people, it’s a neuromuscular coordination issue—they don’t know how to fire their hips,” Glisic says. “They haven’t made that mind-muscle connection.”
Signs your hips need strengthening
Hip weakness does not always show up as hip pain. Instead, it may cause issues in other parts of the body, such as the knees or lower back. While it can be difficult to pinpoint hip weakness as the direct cause, certain movement patterns may offer clues.
“If, when you are squatting, you notice your knees diving in, or when you are running, your foot is crossing the midline, those kinds of things can be indicative of glute weakness,” Glisic explains.
Witte adds that persistent tightness or discomfort in the hips can also be a sign. “Most people immediately feel like, ‘Well, I need to stretch more,’” she says. “But oftentimes, actually building strength in deeper ranges of motion can be the ticket to mitigating some of those achy pain signals.”
The best exercises to strengthen your hips
Fortunately, strengthening the hips does not require complicated workouts—just a few targeted moves done consistently can make a big difference.
Glisic recommends starting with stabilizing exercises that help activate the smaller support muscles. Banded clamshells, monster walks, and standing fire hydrants are all great options for waking up the glutes. Once those muscles are engaged, you can build functional strength with compound movements such as:
- Split squats
- Deadlifts
- Lunges (forward, lateral, and reverse)
- Step-ups
- Hip thrusts
Because the hip joint moves in so many directions, Witte advises incorporating exercises that target all planes of motion. “Really play with moving through different angles—mix it up between lateral lunges, curtsy lunges, and reverse lunges,” she suggests.
And do not feel like you have to fit every hip exercise into every workout. Witte recommends choosing one or two hip-focused moves per session and performing three sets of each a couple of times per week. “Just be sure to target the hips from different angles—maybe you do step-ups on Tuesdays and deadlifts on Fridays,” she suggests.
How to get the most out of your hip training
When it comes to strengthening the hips, quality matters more than quantity. Witte emphasizes the importance of progressive overload, which means using enough resistance to challenge the muscles.
“The glute max in particular is the largest muscle in the body, so it needs a pretty big stimulus to get stronger,” she points out. To get the best results, she recommends focusing on slow, controlled movements and aiming for muscular fatigue by the last few reps of each set. “Muscular failure is the number one thing that contributes to helping build muscle.”
The timing of exercises can also make a difference. Witte suggests prioritizing heavier lifts at the beginning of a workout when the muscles are freshest. More targeted stability exercises, like clamshells or banded walks, can be done later in the session.
When to expect results
Building strength takes time, but consistency pays off. According to Glisic, most people start to notice improvements in about eight to twelve weeks.
“You will likely feel so much more comfortable in your body,” Witte adds, “finding more ease with movement throughout the day, less achiness, and just the strength to be able to do stuff—to climb stairs, to pick up heavy things, [not] being held back by how your hips feel.”
With the right approach, strengthening your hips can help you move better, feel better, and reduce your risk of injury—all while building a stronger, more balanced body.
