Let’s Talk Hips

(We’re Talking Flexibility and Strength—not Size and Shape!)

Hips are generally the place where immobility issues are first first noticed.. That doesn’t necessarily mean they start there, but once our hips lose their strength, flexibility, and range of motion, everything above them and below them is affected negatively. Nature made us unlike any other mammal in the animal world, a creature that moves almost solely in an upright position. Once that Rubicon was crossed, our hips became the most important joint in our bodies. It is vital to keep our hips strong and flexible if we want to retain or improve the ability to move that we have enjoyed all our lives. Personally, I consider my hips to be the center, the fulcrum, of my physical life.

But don’t take my word for it. How do your hips feel? Take a few moments to become aware of them and experience how every bodily movement you make, from walking to twisting to squatting to sitting, originates with your hips. Are your hips flexible or stiff? Is one side different from the other? (Most are.) Do you tend to stand with one or the other hip “out”, as if you are sitting on it (and thereby imbalancing them and collapsing your back.) Can you wiggle them, flex them, or bend them easily? Can you squat down to the floor and get up easily? Can you stand on one leg and turn at the hip joint? How much? Do you feel the connection between your hips and everything above and below it?

Our hip joints and bones are supported by many muscles and tendons. All the major muscle groups of the upper and lower body are literally “joined at the hip.” Keeping them flexible and strong is the key to hip function. Simply walking is not enough to do this. Once the hips become stiff, lots of other problems ensue. Addressing your hips because of their interconnectedness becomes a great way to be proactive for the rest of your body.

Hip Flexibility—What Works for Me

My primary means of addressing hip flexibility is yoga. The range of motion and concentration on upper thighs and lower back involved in many of the poses is exactly the preventive (and sometimes remedial) tonic my hips need. I can do these poses in a restorative way or a powerful way depending on whether I am working on flexibility or strength. All the basic yoga standing poses, such as downward dog, upward-facing dog, warrior pose, triangle pose, and side-angle pose, have the hips as the mid-point in the pose. This enables us to benefit greatly from these poses in terms of flexibility or strength (or both). I would add that awareness and paying subtle attention to the alignment of muscles and bones adds an even bigger benefit.

You can learn all this in a class from a certified instructor. I suggest trying several classes at different yoga studios and your local gym to find both the instructor and type of class that fit you best. In addition, I highly recommend the book, Yoga: The Iyengar Way: The New Definitive Illustrated Guide, by Silva, Mira, and Shyam Mehta.

But you can get started right now! I use a few specific poses to encourage flexibility in my hips. One is simply standing with or a support between my knees (image 1) or with my legs and feet together, legs slightly bent, gently squeezing my knees together, pushing up from the floor and my feet, while engaging my thighs and pulling them upward, as well as rotating the tops of my thighs inward. This allows my sitting bones in the back (and all the muscles back there) to gently widen and feel more spacious. At the same time I engage my back and spine and stretch all the way up through my neck and head. The whole posture is a simple yet profound engagement of your hips, spine and legs. All of the sensations — the engagement of hips, spine and legs, pushing down through your feet, and rotating the thighs, both inward and outward depending on the pose — is central to many other yoga poses as well. It helps keep my hip joints flexible and strong.

Two other poses that I rely on are pigeon pose (image 2) and lizard pose (image 3). Both are arrived at through downward dog, by either stepping one leg forward or bending it underneath me, and I usually do them after a workout in the gym to reintroduce flexibility to that vital area. (If you’re not familiar with these yoga poses, a quick Google search will give you images and basic instructions.)

Hip Strength—Gain Stability and More

The same poses mentioned above, especially the more demanding ones like warrior pose, are excellent hip and leg strength builders. There again, alignment, engagement and rotating the upper thighs just below the hip joint is an especially good idea. Also, any movements that involve torque and twisting tension are beneficial, with or without added weight in the form of pulleys or bands like I learned from my trainer friend Graham Fairley. Our hips don’t act independently of our legs and torso and need to be strengthened in full-body movements, not just leg presses and squats (although those can be a good strengthening starting point).

Play with it, feel it, live in your body awareness. Once my hips became strong enough and flexible enough to support a full range of body movement, a sense of not only stability but space entered the middle of my body. I began noticing how crucial my hips were to not only all my movements but to the sense of space in my abdomen and torso, giving my organs more “room to breathe.” My morning routine is focused primarily on waking up my hips and spine. Without question, our hips and spine are the key to our ability to move in later life, and a vital factor in our independence and self-care. Please take care of them if those things matter to you.