How to improve hip mobility in midlife

Exercises and tips to help you increase hip mobility midlife

Curious how to improve your hip mobility in midlife? If you are looking for ways to work on improving your hip mobility there are a few things I would recommend. I always want to start people off with finding ways to move more in your everyday life so that you aren’t having to “find the time” to add something else into your routine. The easiest way to work on increasing your hip mobility is to start sitting on the floor more.

What causes poor hip mobility?

Aside from direct injury, many people will say it is due to overuse injury. This information can be confusing and interpreted the wrong way leaving you moving less rather than moving more. Poor hip mobility comes from lack of moving the hips through various positions. The hips are designed to be mobile and should move through different positions so that all of the muscles surrounding the hips stay supple.

Unfortunately, with all of the sitting we do day to day, our body is going through a repetitive 90-degree movement and not moving through different patterns which is where the overuse comes in. This does not mean that if you are moving your hips in different ways throughout the day with full squats, moving the hips into internal and external positions that you will have an overuse injury. Actually, quite the opposite will occur. Our bodies are meant to move. To keep the hips mobile, they need to be moving through full ranges of motion often. Below I share some videos to help with this.

Make it easy:

You can start your day by sitting on the floor to put your shoes on. You can also work on watching TV on the floor or doing some foam rolling. This will help to ease tension in the muscles and also requires you to be on the floor. If you have children or grandchildren, get down on the floor with them to play. All of these can be incorporated naturally into your daily routine without having to make time to exercise.

If you have some time to exercise and want to practice some beginner hip mobility exercises as well. These are a few of the ones I recommend for improving hip mobility.

Exercises in the video:

1. Click Clack-sitting on the floor, with feet flat on the floor, knees up. Move your hips forward and back moving into an arched back and then rounded back. Not through the back but through the hip.
2. Hip clocks on back-laying on your back, imagine your hips are a clock. You will rotate your hips to 12 o’clock, 3 o’clock, 6 o’clock, and 9 o’clock. Notice if either side is feeling sticky.
3. Hip rotation stretch-on one knee and one leg out to the side, you will move your leg at the hip (not the ankle), trying to get the foot facing forwards and then towards the ceiling. Notice if there is a difference on either side.
4. Frogger stretch-this is a more advanced move and needs to be done carefully. On hands and knees, slowly allow knees to slide out to the side, make sure to keep your back from arching.
5. 90 90’s-Sitting on your bottom, with knees in a bent position you will allow your left leg to move towards the floor with the outside of the knee going towards the floor. The right leg will also move towards the floor, but with the inside of the knee dropping the same direction as the other leg. Your legs will both be in a 90 degree position. Try to do the same thing on the other side.

Above exercises too difficult? Start here

This is an exercise to start working on movement through the thoracic spine to help prepare for hip mobility.

Looking for more advanced hip mobility exercises

If you want to work through different movement patterns to help with hip mobility and the mobility within the whole body than I would recommend joining me for our Movement Snack Program where we will move through different positions each week to help you move your whole body better.

Other blog posts to read:

Sit on the floor

What is the best sitting posture?