Hip Exercises Against Gravity

The muscles surrounding your hips lift your legs in different directions. Your glutes extend your hips, or drive your leg back behind you. Your hip flexors at the front of your hips lift your legs forward. The muscles at the outside of your legs lift your legs out to your sides. You can strengthen each of these muscles with body-weight exercises that make you work against gravity.

  1. Body-weight Exercises

    • Although body-weight exercises don’t use weighted implements like dumbbells or barbells, they’re still effective at developing strength because your muscles have to overcome the pull of gravity on your body weight. How difficult the exercises are depends on your strength levels and the weight of your legs. Therefore, the number of repetitions you need to do to fatigue your muscles will vary. Perform the hip exercises two to three days per week, doing two to three sets of each one.

    Hip Extension

    • Body-weight exercises that strengthen your glutes include the bridge and quadruped hip extension. To perform bridge, lie on your back on an exercise mat with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. Drive your heels into the mat as you pick your hips up off the floor as high as you can. Hold the top position for a moment, and then lower your hips back to the floor. For quadruped hip extension, get on your hands and knees with your back straight. Pick one foot up off the floor and extend your leg back until your upper thigh is parallel to the floor. Return your knee and then perform the exercise with the opposite leg.

    Hip Flexion

    • To strengthen your hip flexors, include the lying leg raise and standing knee raise in your workouts. To perform lying leg raise, lie on your back on an exercise mat with your legs straight. Keep your leg straight as you lift one leg to vertical. Return your leg to the floor and repeat. After you finish a set with one leg, perform the exercise on the opposite leg. To do standing knee raise, position yourself next to a chair so you can hold it for balance. Stand on one leg and drive your opposite knee up to your chest. Return your foot to the floor and repeat. After you’re done, do the exercise on the other leg.

    Hip Abduction

    • The hip abductor muscles, which include your gluteus medius, gluteus minimus, tensor fasciae latae and gluteus maximus, are in your buttocks and on the outside of your thighs. The side-lying hip abduction develops the abductors. Side-lying hip abduction is performed by lying on your side on an exercise mat with your legs stacked atop each other. Lift your top leg toward the ceiling and then lower it back down. Once you’re done with the set, flip over and perform the exercise on the opposite leg.