9 Top Hip Mobility Exercises
Table of Contents
Introduction:
Hip mobility must be maintained for proper posture, general movement, and injury avoidance. Stiffness, lower back pain, and decreased flexibility caused by tight hips can make daily tasks and exercise more difficult. You may increase functional strength, increase joint flexibility, and release tense muscles by including certain hip mobility exercises in your program.
We’ll look at nine efficient hip mobility exercises in this tutorial that will improve overall performance, decrease pain, and increase flexibility.
Benefits of 9 Hip Mobility Exercises:
- Improves Flexibility: Frequent hip mobility exercises aid in the relaxation of tense muscles, allowing a wider range of motion during daily tasks and exercise.
- Reduces Lower Back Pain: Stiff hips are a common cause of back pain; releasing the hips helps lessen the strain on the spine.
- Boosts Athletic Performance: Running, squatting, leaping, and general functional movement are all made better by strong, flexible hips.
- Prevents Injuries: Having flexible hips lowers the chance of strain by reducing the tension on other joints like the knees and lower back.
- Promotes Better Posture: Your pelvis can remain in its correct position while your hips are mobile, which makes standing and sitting less painful.
- Improves Circulation: Hip stretches and movements promote improved blood flow, which speeds up healing and lessens stiffness.
- Improves Balance and Stability: Having flexible, strong hips increases core engagement, which increases stability throughout daily motions and exercise.
- Facilitates Daily Motions. With movable hips, simple activities like bending, walking, and prolonged sitting become more pleasant.
- Promotes Joint Health & Longevity: Maintaining hip mobility helps you stay active and pain-free as you age while also protecting your joints.
9 Hip Mobility Exercises Video:
9 Hip Mobility Exercises:
Hip Circles:
A quick and easy mobility exercise that helps release the hip joints and surrounding muscles is the hip circle. You may enhance the range of motion, decrease stiffness, and boost blood flow by circularly rotating your hips.
Additionally, this exercise promotes improved balance and stability, warms up the lower body, and gets the hips ready for more dynamic motions. It’s a great option for anyone who wants to reduce stress and keep their hips supple and healthy.
Glute bridges:
A straightforward yet incredibly powerful exercise, glute bridges work the hamstrings, lower back, and core in addition to the glutes. Lifting your hips toward the ceiling while resting on your back with your legs bent strengthens the posterior chain, increases hip stability, and lessens lower back pain caused by weak glutes. In addition to improving posture and athletic performance, this exercise strengthens the base for other complex exercises like deadlifts and squats.
Lunges with Twist:
Twisted lunges are a potent version of the standard lunge that incorporates core engagement and lower-body strengthening. By rotating your torso toward the leading leg as you advance into a lunge, you strengthen your obliques, increase your spinal mobility, and improve your balance.
This exercise is great for functional fitness and athletic performance since it trains stability and coordination while strengthening the quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes.
Butterfly Stretch:
A mild flexibility exercise that works the muscles in the inner thighs, hips, and groin is the butterfly stretch. It is done by sitting on the floor with your feet together and your knees bent outward. Then, with your back straight, you gently press your knees toward the floor.
This stretch increases total lower body flexibility, eases groin stiffness, and improves hip mobility. It’s particularly helpful for releasing tension from prolonged sitting and for getting the hips ready for exercises like strength training, yoga, and jogging.
Supine Figure Four Stretch:
A great exercise for releasing hip and gluteal stiffness and reducing lower back stress is the supine figure four stretch. To perform it, make a “4” shape with one ankle crossed over the other leg while lying on your back with both knees bent.
To increase the stretch, gently draw the uncrossed leg closer to your chest. The piriformis and glute muscles are the focus of this posture, which helps to ease stiffness, increase hip mobility, and release pressure that may be causing sciatic nerve pain.
Clamshells:
A specific exercise for strengthening the gluteus medius, a muscle crucial for hip stability and balance, is the clamshell. To simulate the opening of a clamshell, you must lie on your side with your knees bent and your feet together. Then, slowly raise the upper knee while maintaining touch with your feet.
This straightforward yet efficient exercise promotes good alignment when walking, running, or performing other lower-body activities, helps correct muscular imbalances, and guards against knee and hip diseases.
Straight leg raises:
One of the most basic strengthening exercises is the straight leg lift, which works the quadriceps, hip flexors, and core. They are performed by lying flat on your back with one leg bent and the other straight. The straight leg is then slowly raised to a 45-degree angle and then carefully lowered back down.
Without putting undue strain on the joints, this exercise is particularly helpful for increasing general mobility, strengthening the lower body following an injury, and improving knee stability.
Side-lying hip abduction:
A specific exercise for strengthening the hip abductors, especially the gluteus medius, is side-lying hip abduction. To do it, stack your legs straight and lie on one side. Maintaining correct alignment, raise the upper leg gently while keeping your core active.
Then, regulate the descent. In addition to improving lateral mobility and hip stability, this exercise can help avoid knee or lower back problems caused by weak hip muscles.
Prone hip extension:
A good exercise for strengthening the glutes and lower back muscles is prone hip extension. To accomplish it, place your arms comfortably at your sides or behind your forehead while lying face down on a mat with your legs straight.
Extend your hip while maintaining a straight knee to raise one leg off the ground while maintaining an engaged core. Then, slowly drop it back down. This exercise promotes improved posture and lower back health while strengthening the glutes and improving hip stability.
Conclusion:
In summary, performing these nine hip mobility exercises daily may significantly increase flexibility, strengthen supporting muscles, increase joint stability, and lower the chance of injury. They enhance general hip health for everyday activities and athletic performance, encourage improved movement patterns, and reduce stiffness.
FAQs:
Leaning back into the hamstring stretch lengthens the calves, back, and hamstrings, while the lunge improves hip mobility and flexibility. This movement is a terrific dynamic stretch for a warm-up since it works your anterior (front) and posterior (back), improving your overall mobility.
Age, past injuries, and general flexibility are some of the variables that might affect how long it takes to get the results you want. After a few weeks of regular stretching and mobility exercises, some people may see an improvement in their hip flexibility.
The hardest muscle to stretch is frequently the psoas major, which is pronounced SO-az. This deep core muscle is crucial for hip flexion and stability because it links your femur to your lower spine. Part of the issue is that you utilize it each time you sit, walk, or raise your knee.
People with hip problems benefit greatly from ellipticals and stationary cycles because they provide a full-body, low-impact workout with adjustable resistance and inclination. Because of their moderate motion and chair-like seats, recumbent bikes are especially helpful for people with hip problems.
Biomechanical factors, including weakening of the gluteal muscles at the rear of the hip and overload of the iliopsoas tendon at the front of the hip, can cause this. The mechanism that causes lateral (outer) hip pain is comparable to this one.
The Iliopsoas
The rectus femoris, sartorius, and tensor fasciae latae are the other hip flexors, but the iliopsoas is the strongest and the primary mover of hip flexion. Running, walking, and standing all need the iliopsoas. When postural alterations take place, the iliacus and psoas major execute distinct movements.
Mobility exercises may be done regularly since the human skeletal system has joint structures that either enable mobility or offer stability. The body must move.
Weak hip flexors can cause hip or lower back pain and make it harder to do specific tasks, including walking or climbing stairs. A person’s posture and gait may be impacted by weak hip flexors.
The muscles, tendons, and ligaments supporting the hips can be strained by repetitive activity, especially from running, cycling, or simply walking. Hip strains can be painful and impair proper hip function.
The hip joint is a multiaxial joint that may move in the following directions: flexion, extension, abduction, adduction, external rotation, internal rotation, and circumduction.
Flexion, extension, abduction, adduction, external rotation, internal rotation, and circumduction are all possible motions of the hip joint, which is a multiaxial joint.
Stretch both legs out in front of you while lying flat on your back. Pull your right thigh toward your chest by tying your wrists behind it. Straighten that leg, keep it there, and then bend it back down. After a few repetitions of this motion, swap legs.
You may bend forward at the hip and raise your knee toward your chest by using the hip flexor muscles, which are a collection of muscles located close to the top of your thighs. Hip flexion is made possible by the cooperation of the iliacus, pectineus, psoas major, rectus femoris, and sartorius muscles.
By strengthening and extending the surrounding muscles and supporting tissues, mobility exercises help you move more freely and effectively by increasing a joint’s range of motion. Mobility exercises use active, controlled motions over a joint’s complete range of motion to enhance balance, coordination, and general musculoskeletal health, in contrast to static stretching, which concentrates on passively extending muscles. Bodyweight exercises that replicate natural movement patterns like squatting, lunging, and pushing are a few examples, as are dynamic stretching, yoga, Pilates, and foam rolling.
Lubricating the hip joint helps to reduce pain and facilitate hip mobility. Increase your range of motion and flexibility. Stiffness can be lessened by walking since it increases hip range of motion and flexibility by relaxing the hip flexors.
To help get your hips feeling lovely and limber, we’ve put up a sequence of our favorite hip mobility exercises. It is essential to perform this workout every day to assist in maintaining and enhancing hip mobility.
Hip mobility, which includes both flexibility (the length of the muscles) and the strength and control to actively move the joint through its complete range of motion, is the capacity to move the hip joint through its whole range of motion in a controlled and pain-free way. It enables basic everyday motions like walking, crouching, and reaching, and by guaranteeing appropriate body mechanics and force distribution, hip mobility is critical for avoiding pain and accidents.
Take a seat on the floor with both knees bent at a 90-degree angle, one leg in front of you and the other behind. You will clearly feel your hips releasing and extending as you lean forward a little and maintain the position for at least 30 seconds.
References:
- Vlce, K. A. M. C. (2025, January 29). 9 Hip mobility Exercises for Stronger, Pain-Free hips. Real Simple. https://www.realsimple.com/health/fitness-exercise/workouts/hip-exercises
- Cronkleton, E. (2025, July 3). 14 Exercises for strengthening and increasing mobility in the hips. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/hip-exercises
- Runyon, S., & Runyon, S. (2025, March 6). 9 Hip mobility Exercises for Stronger, Pain-Free hiking. Backcountry Physical Therapy – Colorado Springs Physical Therapy. https://www.backcountry.physio/9-hip-mobility-exercises-for-hikers/
- Hip strengthening exercises for seniors. (n.d.). One Medical. https://www.onemedical.com/blog/exercise-fitness/hip-strengthening-exercises-for-seniors/
- Seidenburg, M. (2025, March 17). Hip mobility exercises for injury prevention and enhanced performance. BenchMark Physical Therapy. https://www.benchmarkpt.com/blog/hip-mobility-exercises-for-injury-prevention-and-enhanced-performance/
