An important part of some common exercises including deadlifts, RDL’s and the bent over row.
A hip hinge is a movement where the hips rotate, folding the body in half. In more scientific terms, it’s where the hips are the axis of rotation between the neutral lumbopelvic segment and the femur (your thigh). It’s important to master as it helps you improve your technique on exercises designed to primarily target the posterior chain, also known as the back of you, and the muscles of the glutes, hamstrings and lower back.
If you train with a personal trainer at Absolute Body Solutions in Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool or London you will learn how to hip hinge effectively and safely but if you ever have any questions, even outside of your sessions, have a chat with your PT and they will be able to explain in detail how to execute exercises such as these properly.
Why is the hip hinge an important movement to learn?
To avoid injury! If you don’t understand how to hinge correctly, you may end up using your lower back during exercises, causing pain and reducing the range of motion of the movement and also not utilising the muscles you are trying to use effectively.
What exercises include hip hinge movement?
In your training sessions, you may perform several exercises which require you to perform the hip hinge movement. These include the Romanian deadlifts (RDL’s), stiff leg deadlifts, deadlifts and the bent over row.
Here’s how to improve…
Follow these simple steps and you’ll be performing the perfect hip hinge movement in no time!
- Firstly, activate your glutes before you perform a hip hinge in any of the exercises.
- Try the movement without weights, contracting the correct muscles through slow reps. Focus on your mind-muscle connection!
- Don’t start with a weight that’s too heavy, focus on getting the movement right first and then increase the weight.
- Add a band around the waist to really pull the hips back.
- Try banded and non banded reps in your warm up sets.
- Watch yourself doing a hip hinge in a mirror to perfect the movement, and utilise any touch points such as walls.
Struggling with hip hinges?
Don’t worry! You can easily regress exercises to one less complex. For example swapping an RDL with a body weight or weighted glute bridge.
