Ever caught your reflection at the gym and noticed your hip shifts out to one side during squats? Or maybe you’ve noticed the shift when climbing stairs or trying to stay in midline during single leg exercises?
If you do a quick search online or ask around at the gym, the advice you’ll get is “work your hip abductors, especially glute medius.” While this is definitely a piece of the puzzle, there’s a lot more involved in ensuring stable, pain-free hips.
Read on to learn a comprehensive routine to address hip shift.
Why Does Hip Shift Matter?
A little shift may not seem like a big deal, but it’s a pretty clear sign that your hip muscles aren’t working properly. It can also be a warning sign for possible hip instability – when the head of the femur, or thigh bone, isn’t secured safely in its socket in the pelvis.
Hip instability has been associated with cartilage degeneration in the hip [1], which is in turn associated with increased chance for future hip replacements.
While some risk factors for hip instability are out of your control, like the shape and size of your bones, active muscular support is a huge component you can influence.
While the glute medius and other glutes are definitely involved in preventing hip shift, your deeper hip muscles, hip adductors, pelvic floor muscles and even your intrinsic foot muscles have to fire properly to ensure truly stable hips
4 Hip Stabilization Exercises to Fix Your Hip Shift
The exercises we’ll learn below help ensure the muscles that support your hips are working through their full range of motion, providing hip power and stability through all the movements you need to perform in life and sport.
As always, you can follow along on YouTube here.
Exercise 1: ASMR QL & Erector Spinae
This first exercise takes us a little higher than the hips – to the quadratus lumborum (QL) and erector spinae, muscles that are found on either side of your spine.
This Active Self-Myofascial Release technique works to release these muscles, which often step up to the plate when the glute medius and other hip abductors are slacking off. These muscles can quickly become tight and weak when overworked, leading to discomfort and a cycle of poor activation.
By releasing your QL and erector spinae before we start activating the glutes, we set ourselves up for preferred activation patterns.
- Lay on the floor with a massage ball under one side of your spine, just above the pelvis
- Bend your knees, keep your feet flat on the floor, and relax over the ball
- Perform a posterior pelvic tilt, pausing at the top to breathe and relax
- Return to the start, move the ball slightly up the spine and repeat
Perform on both sides, moving from just above the pelvis to the bottom of the rib cage, for 1-2 minutes on each side.
Exercise 2: Standing Glute Contraction
The next exercise may look really simple, but by focusing on subtle activation cues, you’ll create a stabilizing activation pattern that integrates your entire lower body, from your feet up to your deep pelvic and hip muscles.
This exercise starts with creating an active arch in your foot. If you aren’t sure how to do that, read this article.
- Start standing and find an active arch in both feet
- Activate your pelvic floor muscles (pretend you were peeing and trying to stop midstream)
- Activate your glutes, internally rotating your hips slightly
- Ramp up the contractions as much as you can and hold for 10 seconds
- Gradually ramp down
- Relax and repeat for 3 reps
Exercise 3: Lateral Hip Hinge
Now that everything’s firing, it’s time to integrate this muscular activation into movement patterns.
The third exercise works in a closed chain pattern in the frontal plane of motion (where the hip shift occurs) to stabilize muscles on both sides of your hips – the hip abductors (including glute med) and the hip adductors.
- Stand in front of a wall on your right foot and find an active arch
- Control the motion as you let your torso lean over toward the right, activating your glutes
- Hold before performing a controlled lean toward the left, maintaining an active, planted foot
- Hold, then repeat the entire cycle
Perform 2-3 sets of 4-6 reps on each leg.
Exercise 4: PM Clamshell
This final exercise continues to integrate proper activation up and down the body, helping avoid hip shift in a very functional movement pattern. Training this pattern will have direct carryover into activities like climbing stairs, lunging, and running.
- Stand with your left shoulder touching a wall
- Take your left arm forward and bend your left knee, lifting your foot behind you
- Activate short and skinny foot in your right foot
- Push your left side against the wall slightly as you squat down, driving your right knee forward
- Extend fully to return to the start
Perform 2-3 sets of 4-6 reps on each leg.
To maximize your results, perform this entire routine 2-3 times per week for 4-6 weeks.
For more ideas for glute med exercises, check out this article. And if you’re looking for a comprehensive, step-by-step approach to managing hip stabilization and all types of hip pain, check out our Hip Pain Solution program.
