Learning the Proper Hip Hinge

The hip hinge is a fundamental movement in athletics and fitness. Bilateral hip hinge is the foundation to proper dead lifting and squatting, it's important to core movements, and crucial for running form. Let's talk about what the hip hinge is, how to improve it, and how to advance it.

Notice the back and forth curves of the spine

The hip hinge is basically the movement of touching your toes. There are a few things to keep in mind for proper form. It is important to keep the core set and maintain a good curve of the spine. The spine is naturally designed to have a series of 3 curves. Generally, these curves divide the spine into three sections. Notice in the picture the slight curve in the low back or lumbar spine. When doing a hip hinge movement, it is important to maintain that slight curve. Too much curve or too flat of a curve lead to excess stress in the lower back. You can maintain your lumbar curve by activating your core. For more information on how to do that, check out my previous post. 

Next, it is important that the hips shift back or posteriorly to initiate the movement. Part of the purpose of hip hinge exercises is for the body to learn to how to shift the center of mass while moving weight. Picture picking up a heavy object. If you were to bend at your waist without a posterior hip shift, you would add a lot of pressure to your low back. By utilizing the posterior hip shift, you are able to use the muscles of your legs to lift the object. The image to the right does a nice job showing the posterior hip shift in a hip hinge.

When returning to starting position, it is vital to use the muscles of the lower body posterior chain as opposed to extension of the spine and upper body. When watching athletes perform this movement, I look for how they stand up from the bent over position and if they finish the movement. If the movement is dysfunctional, I will see the upper body extend to drive the movement. Essentially, if you use your upper body to extend up, you are putting a lot of stress on your back and training a dysfunctional movement. You want to use your legs, especially your glutes and hamstrings. After doing any sort of hip hinge exercise, I try to ask my players where they feel it. If they say their lower back, we need to make an adjustment! Hip hinge exercises in the weight room often involve heavy weight. Doing them with poor form exposes the low back. This doesn't mean you don't do them, you just need to make some adjustments.

If someone is having issues with feeling the posterior weight shift, I will either have the person do the some hip hinge movements with toes slightly elevated or with a band around the person's hips pulling into posterior shift. This is also one of my favorite hip/glute exercises. I will have the athlete kneeling with the band around the waist. The athlete extends at the hip using the glutes. It's basically a hip hinge with the shins taken out of it to hyper focus on the hips. I called these vertical glute bridges because of the resemblance to a standard glute bridge just in the vertical position. 

One of the other issues with hip hinging is maintaining your core and keeping a proper lumbar curve. The best thing that I have found to help feel this is to have the athlete do a hip hinge while holding a stick in line with the spine. By placing one had on the lower back to hold the stick, space is created to maintain the curve in the lumbar spine. While going through the hip hinge the stick should maintain contact with the head, upper back, and sacrum.

In the event that an athlete is overly using spinal extension to return to starting position, I like to simplify the exercises to focus on the hip hinge. Here I might do vertical glute bridges or traditional glute bridges. If the athlete really struggles, I will work on hip tilts and core exercises. It is very important to figure out how to use the legs to do these exercises otherwise the low back is susceptible to injury during working out and it leads to issues with movements during activity. 

To recap, the three things that I look for in a hip hinge are good core stability which leads to a proper lumbar curve, posterior hip shift, and using the legs and not the back to return to the starting position. There are ways to cue and improve this movement and I believe it is a vital movement. The important take away here is, if it hurts in your back...make an adjustment. That's all for now...from the training room.