5 Psoas Strengthening Exercises to Solve the Root Cause

In this article, you’ll learn five psoas strengthening exercises to get to the root cause to relieve that achiness and tightness for good.

In these exercises, we’re going to focus on the hip flexor area and a little bit more on that psoas muscle. But there are other muscles involved in the exercises that I will show you that fix the root cause of the achiness and tightness in the front of the hip.

First thing, if your psoas or the front of the hip area feels achy and tight, stop doing the standard hip flexor stretches.

If you want to follow along with a video of these exercises, click over to Your Psoas Isn’t Just Tight, It’s WEAK on YouTube.

Anatomy of Psoas Tightness

Before we get into the five tight psoas exercises, I want to cover some background, some anatomy, and some scientific reasoning behind why the psoas muscle and the hip flexor area get tight and achy.

Even before that, I want to commend you for being here, for continuing to be a student and learning. And for taking control of your own health and well-being. This is something that we need more of, and we need people like you. So keep it up! Good work.

Now, I mentioned the psoas muscle. It’s a popular one, and it’s part of the hip flexor group.

Hip flexion is the movement of bringing the knee to the chest. The psoas is one muscle that does it. There’s also the iliacus. Those two muscles are often combined and called the iliopsoas. But we like to think of them differently because they have slightly different functions, which I will cover in a second.

There’s also the rectus femoris, which is a quadricep muscle. It’s part of the quadriceps group, but because it crosses the hip joint, it can contribute to hip flexion. The thing is, we just don’t want it to contribute to hip flexion too much.

The last muscle that I’ll talk about is the pectineus. That’s a short muscle in the front of the hip. It does hip flexion and adduction.

These are the four main hip flexor muscles.

We’re going to focus on the psoas because of where it originates. It originates on the different vertebrae in the lumbar spine. This tells us that it contributes to hip flexion, but it also contributes to something at the lumbar spine. That something is lumbar stability, especially in the neutral position or slightly extended position.

That’s a key cue throughout all of the exercises that you’ll see. We need to maintain that lumbar spine’s position so that the psoas can effectively work.

Now that you can see it, you can visualize it. It should help you to execute the exercises better and get more out of the exercises. So that’s one of the cues that is really important when you do the exercise. Remember that.

Why does the psoas always get tight and weak?

Sitting.

That’s one thing that contributes to so many issues in today’s society. We sit too much, but specifically when we sit, we are on our butts, often in a posterior pelvic tilt.  That means if we had a tail, it would be as if we were tucking our tail between our legs with a flexed lumbar spine.

The psoas can’t effectively work in that position.

The other thing is we’ve got a backrest, so we’re leaning back. We’re in this bad position, this slumped, flexed position which shortens the psoas and leads to psoas weakness. It doesn’t have to work because we’re on the backrest, so it doesn’t contribute to this proper neutral spine,  good alignment, and stability of the lumbar spine.

If we’re not using it, we’re going to lose it. Use it or lose it. That’s a maxim that applies to pretty much everything human. So it’s getting weak. It’s atrophying. It’s in the shortened position that causes so many issues.

We’re going to do exercises to restore all of those issues.

Now, you’ll often hear me talk about not stretching, specifically no static or standard stretching like the hip flexor kneeling lunge. That’s the one where you drop down to one knee and push your hips forward until you feel a stretch.

I actually used to prescribe that quite a bit, but I rarely do so now. When I do, there are a few specific cues that we need to keep in mind.

The problem with this is that it doesn’t restore strength. So if you’re expecting lasting changes in muscle length and range of motion from this, you’re not going to get it because you’re not going to strengthen the muscle with this.

The other problem is it’s really easy to be over-aggressive with this stretch. You can get in there and really put your weight into it. That will aggravate the anterior part of the hip, specifically the hip joint capsule and the ligaments there. When you do that, you can increase your achiness. Then you think, “oh, I need to do more stretching.” You do more stretching, and it becomes a vicious cycle, getting worse and worse. You’re getting more and more achy and not improving your hip flexor length.

5 Psoas Strengthening Exercises

We’re going to go through five exercises in this routine that you can do 2 – 3 days a week. If you want to feel some good effects, do these for at least four weeks. It could be up to eight weeks, but four weeks is a good amount of time to feel some good effects.

At two weeks, you might start to feel some beneficial effects. Even doing it once, you’ll probably feel better. But if you want your results to persist, you’ve got to put in the time and the reps.

Exercise 1: Active Self-Myofascial Release: Hip Flexors

The first technique we’re going to go through is active self-myofascial release for the hip flexors.

You’ll need a massage ball or lacrosse ball. And if you want to use a weight, that’s the easiest thing to use for this exercise to apply pressure. You could apply pressure with your hand, but it’s much easier to do it with the weight.

1. Lay on the floor
2. Bend your knee on the side you’re working on
3. Place the ball on the front of the hip and rest the weight on top of it
4. Slowly slide your foot out (hip extension)
5. Reset, moving the ball to a slightly different area

Reset all around the front of the hip here for 1 -2 minutes. If you only have one side that bothers you, do both sides anyway.

This is good for you. This will help to restore tissue quality, break up any adhesions or scar tissue and allow that muscle to work properly through its full range of motion.

If you feel anything weird, you might be on a vessel. Just don’t go on that area. Don’t do anything that feels weird or causes more pain.

So that’s active self-myofascial release for the hip flexors.

After you’ve completed a minute or two on each side, we’ve restored length there and want to get the activation going right away.

We never stretch or go for massages and then just leave it at that. We loosen the tissue up to improve the quality of the tissue. Then we activate that tissue. That’s how we can get those changes that we’ve gained through the massage or through the stretch or the release.

Exercise 2: Standing Glute Contraction

The next exercise is the standing glute contraction.

This is in the ROM Coach app, and I’ve shown this in other videos. But it’s very simple.

1. Stand with good posture, good alignment, and relaxed knees (soft, not hyper-extended)
2. Slowly ramp up glute activation with a little bit of internal rotation of the hips
3. Turn the thighs inside (toward each other) just a little bit, like 1 – 5 degrees
4. Ramp it up, nice and strong, as hard as you can in terms of activating the glutes
5. Hold that for 5 – 10 seconds
6. Gradually release

Do 1 – 2 sets of 4 – 6 reps with a 5 – 10 second hold.

It’s a slow ramp-up and a slow ramp-down. The key is that internal rotation that’ll help you to keep your weight on your feet even, not rolling out to the sides. It keeps that alignment of the pelvis and the hips.

Once I’m holding it as strong as I can without any pain or issues, I’m breathing and holding for five to ten seconds, one to two slow breaths.

We’re focused on activating the glutes. It’s going to co-contract around the hips and get all the hip muscles working. Those hip flexor muscles that we talked about earlier? It gets them working in this neutral or slightly extended position.

Remember, we’ve got our hips stuck in this position from all the sitting. Now we’re lengthening it, and we’re activating the muscle. We’re starting to restore that activation, restore that strength.

Exercise 3: Standing Slumpy Psoas

Next, we’re going to do the Standing Slumpy Psoas.

This is a great exercise because it dissociates that commonly associated movement pattern of hip flexion, which is when we flex our hips, we often posteriorly pelvic tilt and flex our lumbar spines. But by doing that, we’re not effectively targeting the psoas muscle.

We’re going to do the opposite.

Face the wall and lean forward using your palms or fists to support you against the wall.

1. Start off slumped posture
2. Raise your knee and get into good posture
3. Hold at the top, keep driving the knee up to flex the hip, and activate those hip flexors
4. Hold for 5 – 10 seconds
5. Slowly lower your leg back to the ground with good posture
6. Switch sides & repeat

For the Standing Slumpy Psoas, do 2 – 3 sets of 4 – 6 reps with 5 – 10 second holds.

Think of keeping your pelvis level. Pay attention as you raise your knee, you might have to drop this hip toward the ground.

Suck the leg into the pelvis instead of reaching it towards the wall.

Keep those muscles on as you slowly drop the foot to the ground for a soft landing.

That’s the standing slumpy psoas. It’s a great exercise to work this muscle in the proper way in order to start building strength here.

Now, once you’ve got good activation, we can actually add some external load, like a dumbbell, to this. By then, your cueing and your technique should be good.

All you do is start off the same way, then place the dumbbell on your knee. Suck that leg in, drive that knee up, and here we can progressively add load to build strength, just like any other exercise we would do in the gym.

1. Start off slumped posture
2. Raise your knee and get into good posture
3. Rest the dumbbell on your knee
4. Hold at the top, keep driving the knee up to flex the hip, and activate those hip flexors
5. Hold for 5 – 10 seconds
6. Slowly lower your leg back to the ground with good posture
7. Switch sides & repeat

It’s a great way to get that psoas activated and then get it stronger.

Now, one problem that a lot of people run into is over-recruitment of the TFL (tensor fasciae latae), which is another hip flexor. It’s not one that I talked about earlier because we don’t really want it to get involved much with hip flexion.

But if the TFL is working too much, here are a couple of tips to shut it off.

First, when you’re flexing the hip, you’re going out a little bit. It’s a little abduction and a little bit of external rotation (knee out, ankle toward your midline.) That’ll target the pectineus, the iliopsoas, and the illiacus.

If you can add load, start to add load after a few weeks.

Exercise 4: Side-Lying Hip ERE

Next up, we’ve got one of my favorite techniques to restore this hip extension range of motion. that’s the lengthened hip flexor position. It’s moving your leg directly behind you.

It’s called the Side-Lying Hip Extension End-Range-Expansion, or ERE.

When you start on this, lay on your side with good spinal posture. You’re not curled up in the fetal position or trying to imitate your cat.

We’re going to work this bottom leg.

1. Lay on your side
2. Actively bring the bottom leg back using the glute
3. Hold for 10 – 15 seconds
4. Place the foot of your top leg on your knee
5. Drive your bottom leg into your knee without letting it  move (isometric)
6. Hold for 10 – 15 seconds
7. Use the glute again to drive the bottom leg back
8. Hold for 10 – 15 seconds

That’s one cycle on that side. Switch sides and do 2 – 4 cycles on each side.

The first contraction puts you in hip extension with the glute activation. This is the range that we’re going to work on. Drive it back, and the first activation is holding it there with your glutes. Keep trying to drive your heel back.

The second contraction strengthens the hip flexors in this extended range of motion.

Maintain good posture and breath throughout the cycle.

That lengthens and improves the range of motion of the hip flexors. It strengthens both the hip flexors and the glutes, and the hip extensors.

That’s going to tell your brain, “Hey, I’ve got strength here. I’m using it so let’s not lose it. We need this.”

That’s the Side Lying Hip Extension End Range Expansion technique.

Exercise 5: Front Support Hip Flexion

The final one we’re going to go through is another one that you can progressively add load to. It’s called the Front Support Hip Flexion.

You will need some bands. You can use ankle straps or long resistance bands anchored around something low.

1. With the band anchored and looped around your ankle, start in the push up position
2. Drive the knee of the anchored leg forward
3. Hold for 2 seconds
4. Return to the starting position

For this one, do 2 – 3 sets of 6  -10 reps.

The same cues apply: keep the pelvis level and drive the knee up with constant activation. Remember to suck the leg into the pelvis and keep control all the way back.

The good thing with this band setup is you can add bands if you need more load. Depending on how much load you have, keep the reps to no more than 12, but if you can get enough load and enough bands so it’s challenging, and you can only do 6 or 10 reps. That’s how you’re going to build strength.

This exercise is an example of functional integration because you need that good core stability to maintain alignment of the spine, and to train this aligned spine (which is necessary for any sport you do – baseball, tennis, etc.), you want good posture and an aligned spine.

So we’ve got the care stability going while the hip flexion is going. Even if you’re running, you want good posture and the ability to maintain good posture as you’re running, and the hip flexors are working properly.

How Long Until Results & Next Steps

Do this whole routine 2 – 3 times a week. The more intensity that you use, like more weight or more bands, the lower frequency per week you want to do. If you’re only doing body weight, you can easily do this three days a week.

Give it at least four weeks. If you do that and you drop the static psoas stretches, you’re going to feel looser, have a greater range of motion, and you’re going to have greater strength. And, if you have pain, hopefully, you’re going to have less of that.

I hope you found this article enlightening. Hopefully, you now have something useful, and you’re going to do these five psoas strengthening exercises.

More importantly, I have some other stuff for you if you want to check it out. There are some other articles that are related, which you might also find interesting. They’re pretty popular.

How to Fix Tight Hip Flexors (Don’t Stretch)

4 Snapping Hip Syndrome Exercises (Plus Psoas Strengthening)

If you do have pain and like this approach, the best that we can give you is our Hip Pain Solution program. It includes exercises like this as well as the approach and the programming that’s time efficient and easy to follow.

Hope this helps. Peace.

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This article was reviewed and updated on June 13, 2020 by our Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Erin Boynton, MD, FRCS to include new research and information on latest surgical developments. Read more about Dr. B here.