By David Drinks
We’re on to week 12 of the hip mobility series, and I’m really excited about this one! This is the final video in the series that covers exercises that you can do to build your hip mobility, so don’t miss this one!
The reason why I’m so excited about this week’s hip mobility video is that it gives you the critical next step that you must have in your hip mobility progression in order to make some of those hip mobility gains you’ve been making stick.
What is this critical next step? As you’ll see in today’s video, the key is to understand how you can integrate hip mobility into your functional strength training routine.
Too often, I see people spend a ton of time laying on the ground stretching, but they never translate that mobility into their strength training routine. Usually, what occurs instead is at least one of two things:
They repeatedly perform the same movements in their strength training routine without enough variation, OR
They only use a partial range of motion on the strength exercises they are doing.
In the first scenario, there’s just not enough variety of movement to truly maximize hip mobility. When you only perform the same movements in the same planes of motion, again and again, you don’t give your hips enough diverse movement in a functional training environment to promote both gaining and maintaining hip mobility.
In the second scenario, you might be doing different exercises, but you’re not pushing as far into your hip range of motion as you could be. This may be because you were told it was bad for your knees if you squat too low, or it could just be that you’re only comfortable moving so far into a specific exercise.
Either way, the problem is that you’re not making your hip mobility training stick because you’re not using it in functional strength training movements on your feet.
When I talk about making your hip mobility training “stick”, I’m talking about the need to reinforce and ingrain your hip mobility by using it in functional patterns. That means that you must be able to access your hip mobility, not just while on the ground, but also on your feet.
After all, you most often move while on your feet, so it doesn’t do you any good if you only have good hip mobility while lying on the ground! Instead, you must take all the good hip mobility training you did while on the ground and build that into moving through different functional patterns on your feet.
Once you begin to work on this in your exercise routine, it sets you up for success when moving in all kinds of different ways in regular life. You’ll have all the hip mobility in all different planes of motion available to you when and where you need it because you’ve been training it in your exercise routine.
Plus, one of the best things you can do to reinforce and make sure that you maintain your hip mobility is to do strength training through as big of a range of motion at the hips as you can. This will ensure that you not only have mobility through those more extreme ranges of motion but that you also have strength through all ranges of motion.
After all, it does you no good to be able to access a certain range of motion if you don’t have enough strength to be stable there. Instead, your body will tighten up again and not allow you to access that range of motion if you don’t have enough strength to control your body through the full range that you’re trying to move.
With that being said, you can hopefully appreciate how quality strength training that moves your hips through a large range of motion in different planes of movement will help you to not just maintain your hip mobility, but also help you to use it in real life.
That’s really the goal anyway. We want the training that we’re doing in the gym to pay off in real life. The only way that that can happen, however, is for you to progress from the ground-based hip mobility drills that we’ve been doing so far, to working on the exercises that I show you in today’s video.
Check it out:
So, there you have it. The key to maximizing your hip mobility is to focus on the exercises that we’ve been talking about throughout this series, and then to progress to functional strength training on your feet, as I showed you in this week’s video.
I’m not going to get too deep into the weeds on how often and how much to do of each of these exercises, since there’s so much variation that can happen in a strength training program, depending on individual circumstances and needs.
My best advice would be to choose one or two of the exercises that you can confidently perform well and start there. Warm-up with some of the ground-based hip mobility drills that we’ve talked about, and then go right into some of the more advanced mobility and strength training exercises that I showed you today.
Every workout that you do should incorporate some kind of functional lower body strength exercise, whether that’s a squat, lunge, hip hinge/deadlift, or any other variation of those basic movements.
Start with no weight or even with some assistance from your arms, as shown by the TRX variations in the video. Once you develop some proficiency, then you can start to add resistance to gain more strength. Just make sure you continue to move through the whole range of motion. After all, our main goal here is to build and maintain your hip mobility!
Lastly, if you need help figuring out how to make these hip mobility drills work for you, and how to build a routine that is specific to what you’re ready for, we’re here to help! Our coaches at the Med Gym can evaluate your hip mobility and direct your training to get you on the right path.
If you want to talk with one of our coaches, you can contact us here. We’d love to hear from you!
Want to learn more about training your body to Move Better, Feel Better, and Live Better? Our exercise programs at the Med Gym are custom made to get you exactly what you need.
Whether you come into the gym or work with us via Med Gym Online, we can help you get on the right track with your movement and fitness.
Contact us here to talk about how we can help you develop an exercise routine that improves your hip mobility and so much more!