If tight and achy hips sound familiar, then it's worth using at-home Pilates workouts to boost your flexibility and strength.
A workout like this one, whic focuses on building stability and flexibility in your hip muscles, helping you move more freely and avoid injury. It's created by Jakarta-based Pilates instructor Mira Hassan, who runs one of Fit&Well's favorite Pilates YouTube workout channels, Flow with Mira.
Hassan explains that training the muscles supporting the hip joints can relieve tightness and tension, while strengthening and stabilizing the pelvis. This is crucial for balance, posture and everyday movement.
This 20-minute workout doesn’t require any equipment, but all the moves are floor-based so a cushioned Pilates mat, like this extra thick top-rated one from Amazon, will support your spine.
How to do Mira Hassan’s 20-minute hip workout
Why do you need to stretch and strengthen your hips?
"Our entire body is interconnected, so if you have tight or weak hips, it's likely this will negatively impact other regions of the body—sometimes in ways we don’t anticipate or expect," says Samantha Lindauer, physical therapist and coach on Ladder. "For example, hip weakness and mobility deficits can lead to changes in pelvic and postural alignment, which may result in back pain."
This is where hip-strengthening exercises like the dead bug, knee tuck and knee lift can help undo some of the damage of a sedentary lifestyle.
"Strengthening the hips can improve efficiency in activities like walking, running and stair climbing, which in turn can prevent compensations with other muscle groups that may lead to pain and wear on our joints," says Lindauer.
Strong hips also assist with core stability and proper posture, which affect non-specific back pain. In fact, according to one 2015 study, published in the Journal of Physical Therapy Exercise, researchers concluded that hip-strengthening exercises are more effective than conventional therapy, like soft tissue mobilization, in reducing chronic low-back pain.
How often you should strengthen your hips will differ from person to person, but as a piece of general guidance Lindauer recommends twice a week. "This can ensure the hips receive adequate volume and stimulus to promote strength gains without impeding recovery."
For more routines like the one above, try these everyday hip stretches to undo the damage of sitting or this hip mobility yoga routine.
