What You Can Do To Help Tight Hips

Try and do one of these every day, whichever feels more natural, holding for 10 seconds by 10 repetitions.

Work On Your Glutes

Your hip flexors can get overworked and irritated if the other muscles nearby aren’t doing their bit – your glutes. Talk to your physio who can let you know if it’s an area you need to strengthen, but forward lunges and single leg bridges are two exercises to get you going.

Aim to do 15 repetition, 2-3 sets, 3-4 times a week and when that’s getting easy, try adding more weight (with dumbbells or a weight across your chest) so that you’re getting pretty knackered come the 15th rep. And then, over the coming weeks and months, you can keep gradually increasing the weight so you’re fatiguing at 8-10 reps, doing 3-5 sets.

More With Your Core

Your stomach muscles (abdominals) also help out to bend and flex the hip. So if your hip flexors are tight it could be your abs are not doing enough to help them. There’s lots of exercises out there to help your core but two of my favourite ones are bicycle crunches and stability ball rollouts.

Again, 2-3 sets until fatigue, 3-4 times a week.

Think About Your Training

Our hips often get tight when we increase our training in a short period of time. Common examples are falling behind on a training plan and trying to make up for lost time, or a spiked increase in mileage/intensity/frequency of your running – a little bit of too much, too soon. 

Your physio or running coach can come up some tweaks to your individual programme to help settle your hips down. Talk to them about possibly introducing some cross-training as well, such as cycling, swimming, weight training, yoga or Pilates.

Your Hips Don’t Lie

Listen to them! If you often have tight hips, it may be time to do something about them. As you can see there are lots of things you can do to help. So if you’re looking for any guidance about the best way forward, please book in an appointment with one of our Chartered Physiotherapists.