A Global Pandemic-Hip Deficiencies: PUT YOUR HIPS INTO IT!
When it comes to human performance, I am a proponent for corrective feedback, corrective movement, and having a proactive approach with programming. What I mean by this is making sure that before I work with a client, I understand not only their strengths but their technical and physical deficiencies as well. One of the biggest areas of deficiency in performance is the hips. Whether you are a Division 1 running back, or a part-time powerlifter, the hips are the number one weapon for any athlete. If you struggle with development of the hips, your performance will suffer. So, how do we fix this issue?
To begin, it’s important to understand the anatomy of the hips in regard to both the hip flexors and extensors. The hip flexors are the psoas major and the iliacus, which both unite to form the iliopsoas muscle. We do also have the psoas minor, a muscle missing in about half of the population, but this muscle is very weak and does not appear to aid our lifting performance much. The hip flexors help to raise the leg upward, a very important process for our daily function such as walking, jogging, running, or even lifting your leg to get out of the car. But if you think about it, the hip flexors purpose (although important) might not seem as important when it comes to extension of the hips for success in movements like the squat and deadlift.
Understand this, though, that with every movement there are two phases, the concentric phase and the eccentric phase, and opposing muscle groups help with redirecting force. Whether it’s creating a muscular contraction to generate force (concentric) or creating a muscular contraction to control the force generated from movement (eccentric), we need these opposing muscle groups of the hip flexors and hip extensors to work in harmony towards developing stronger movements with the barbell.
To explain further, the stretching phase of a muscular contraction that is the eccentric phase is followed by the shortening phase of a muscular contraction that is the concentric phase. When we lower the barbell during a squat or deadlift, it is important for the active muscle group to work during the eccentric phase to stretch and tolerate the load of the bar. While these engaged muscles are being stretched, the opposing muscle groups of our extensors (the flexors) begin to tighten to help direct the weight downward and assist the body.
Another important aspect of the hip flexors is to understand the anatomy and how they cooperate during movement. The hip flexors are notorious for being tighter, especially in the sedentary population. If you think about it, how much time do you spend standing versus sitting? If you’re an office employee working the 9-5 shift, that means your legs are flexed for a majority of the day. This translates to your flexors are used to being shortened which could impede on our ability to fully extend our hips. If our hip flexors are too tight, this could also cause the upper body to create a bad habit with posture, such as leaning forward, and cause chronic lower back fatigue and pain. The big thing is to make sure we understand how to alleviate this problem through various stretches and exercises, so we can grow the range of motion within this part of our anatomy to fully benefit on various types of hip extension movements.
To oppose the concept of hip flexion, we will now discuss the action of hip extension. If you’re looking to be any kind of athlete, you need to have strong and effective hip extension. Having strong hip extension makes sense, but what would consist of “effective” hip extension? To understand this more, it’s important to understand the anatomy of the extensors as well as the use of the flexors to provide correct extension of the hips for the best performance possible.
The gluteus maximus is the primary muscle of the hips and, more importantly, for hip extension. Weak glutes mean weak extension- simple as that. But one of the downfalls of the hip muscles is that they are not as “popular” of a muscle group, which means they get neglected the most. But for improving your performance with the barbell, having strength and mobility of the hips is a must. One thing that’s noticeable by most people is if the hips are weaker, you will start to see the lifter beginning to fall forward, heels raised, and then with all this leverage towards the front of the body, their spine starts to curve. This lack of strength in the hips pushes the load elsewhere, and that’s why we begin to see these deficiencies form. Hip strength and mobility also help with better pelvic placement as lifters try to engage their hips by tilting their hips backwards to show better form with their lower back. Now that the importance of hip strength is clear, let’s take a look at a few exercises that focus on isolating and growing the hips for better success.