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MOVEMENT & PERFORMANCE:
Learn how the hip hinge exercise improves lifting mechanics, protects your lower back and builds strength through better movement patterns.
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At Peak Sports and Spine Centre, we like to provide our athletes tips to prevent future episodes of back pain whilst also improving performance. The hip hinge is a fantastic exercise to correct common faulty movement. Utilize this drill to ensure your back is kept in a safe neutral position whilst bending over. This exercise will benefit those who bend over to pick up children, to those who are performing heavy deadlifts!
The hip hinge is a fundamental primal movement pattern. To keep our back safe when bending over to lift, it’s vital that we hinge from our hips. This movement keeps our neutral spine position whilst we have shifted our weight posteriorly, ensuring movement comes from the hip rather than the lumbar spine. This decreases our likelihood of suffering a low back injury.
The hip hinge exercise takes you from moving through a complete flexion (bending forward) range, to a complete extension range (bending backwards to the starting position). If we do this correctly, we will engage the muscles that make up the posterior chain of the body and give us more strength and power.
1) Grab a broomstick/dowel. Whilst standing with your feet shoulder width apart, place the dowel against your back ensuring it is in contact with 3 places of your body – the back of the skull, between your shoulder blades and the top of the sacrum. Keep the rib cage down, as opposed to letting the ribs flare open, and engage the core muscles.
2) From the above starting point, sit backward from the hips, ensuring the dowel’s three places of contact don’t change. If the dowel loses contact with any of the three points, then you have lost your neutral spine position and therefore should start the exercise again.
If you are unable to maintain the neutral spine position throughout the hip hinge,
then you may need to address the following areas;
Come in to see our physiotherapists if you are having difficulties performing the
hip hinge exercise in order to determine which areas we need to focus on to
improve your lifting mechanics.
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