Runners are notorious for weak hips. Why? Well, mostly because they don’t cross train properly until an injury wakes them up and let’s them know they exist. There’s no amount of lunges and squats that will fix your weak hips. They need to be specifically trained. Ironically, nothing is more important to the running mechanics than strong hips. Kinetic chain that drives the running motion starts at the hip. The infamous IT band injury which can feel like a crazy tight spot in your hip and a very painful spot on the side of your knee is directly related to non functional hips. Shin splints, Achilles injury as well as plantar fasciitis can all be traced to hips that are not doing their job correctly.
Hip muscles are a cluster of interrelated tissues that connect to both the torso and the legs and act as levers that move your body while you run. When not functioning correctly, other muscles like quads or hamstrings take over to compensate. That often results in many different unfortunate outcomes like pulled hamstrings, shin splints and excruciating knee pain.
So, I hope I’ve convinced you to work on your hips and don’t forget to stretch them after your work them just like any other muscle that you would put through a tough workout. Side lunges, side leg lifts, single leg press ups, leg raises with ball between feet, bridge, weighted crunches are some of the few you can do to hit them from every side.
But my favorite hip strengthening routine is kickboxing. In my opinion, nothing works them hips like a good kickboxing workout. I personally saw a huge improvement in hip strength, range of motion and power when I included kickboxing in my weekly cross training circuit.