Strengthen Your Hips for Squatting

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Not everything is a mobility problem (obviously).

Sometimes there is a capacity issue, a strength issue, a technique issue, etc.

There are certain cases when we think mobility is always the problem or other cases where we think technique is always the problem. But you know what we don't say is the problem enough? Not being strong enough.

A great example of this has to do with the hips and knees in squatting.

"knees out knees out' they say. Yet the problem of knees dropping in during squatting still persists for so many athletes. They stretch their hips, they roll out, they try and push their knees out.

My question is, how much dedicated strengthening is that person doing around their hips? Probably not enough.

We put mobility and cuing on a pedestal when the answer could be: you just need to do some dedicated strengthening work around this area.

That's what this video is about, building strength around the hip joint in different amounts of hip external rotation, abduction, and adduction.

Set yourself up as shown in the video with your knee on a pad. From the down side hip, rotate your chest open slightly, hold that position and then use your hip muscles to drive yourself down into hip flexion and back up out of hip flexion. Try to maintain your torso position.

This is some dedicated hip training to work on strength and control.

How much do you do? Use the rate of perceived exertion (0/10 is really really easy, 10/10 is as hard as you can exert yourself).

We don't always have to have a set number of reps, you're allowed to base it on feel.

Perform this drill (if you have weakness around your hip joints) a few times per week working up until its about a 7/10 exertion.

How do you know if you have weak hips? Your knees drop in when you squat, you have a hard time lifting heavy weight, etc. No one is going to be worse off by doing some dedicated hip work...so when in doubt, make it stronger.

Want to learn more about your squat and how to assess it? Download my free squat assessment checklist below

After I took Greg Lehman's course a few weeks ago, I started thinking about this a lot. Thanks Greg for inspiring this idea.

Thanks for reading,

Ryan