Exercises To Strengthen Your Hip Flexor Muscles

Your hip flexor muscles play an important role in every step, squat, and lower body lift. That’s why it’s important to incorporate some exercises and stretches into your routine that will not only strengthen your hip flexor muscles, but also help loosen them up if they feel tight.

The hip flexor muscles are responsible for helping you to flex at the hip, making them essential for everyday movements like walking, running, jumping, and climbing stairs.

Unfortunately, these small but mighty muscles often get overlooked, that is until they become tight or weak, leading to discomfort or injury.

Strengthening your hip flexors not only improves your lifting performance, it also supports good posture and protects your lower back - a must for any Lipstick Lifter striving to feel, move and lift at their best.

Exercises To Strengthen Your Hip Flexor Muscles Contents

What Are The Hip Flexor Muscles

Why Hip Flexor Strength Matters

Exercises to Strengthen Your Hip Flexors

Hip Flexor Stretches to Complement Your Routine

Tips for Incorporating Hip Flexor Exercises Into Your Routine

Exercises To Strengthen Your Hip Flexor Muscles Conclusion

What Are The Hip Flexor Muscles

Your hip flexors are located at the front of your hip. They’re actually a group of muscles, 5 muscles to be exact, those being: iliacus, psoas, pectineus, rectus femoris, and sartorius.

This small, but powerful muscle group's function is not just hip flexion, it also plays a vital role in extending the knee.

Keeping your hip flexors strong and flexible will help you to stay active and perform all lower body movements at your best.

Why Hip Flexor Strength Matters

If your hip flexors are weak or tight, you may experience symptoms like lower back pain, reduced range of motion, or even poor balance.

For women in fitness, strong hip flexors are vital for adding power to squats, lunges, and other compound movements while reducing the risk of injury.

When you dedicate time to strengthening these muscles, you will find that you benefit from a greater range of motion, improved core strength, and better performance on all lower body exercises.

It will also help you to feel more stable and confident in your workouts and daily physical life.

Exercises to Strengthen Your Hip Flexors

Strengthening your hip flexors is pretty straightforward and can be done simply by adding a few key exercises to your routine.

The exercises below will target this muscle group effectively, helping you to build long term stability and flexibility into your hip flexors.

Keep in mind that they each also target other, much larger muscle groups, so many of these exercises can be included as part of your main lower body or core workout.

Here are your hip flexor exercises, in no particular order…

Click the link to learn about each exercise in much more detail, how it targets the hip flexors and which other muscle groups are targeted and how you can incorporate it into your workouts.

TRX Side Crunches

TRX Knee Tucks

TRX Alternating Knee Tucks

Bulgarian Split Squat

Butterfly Hip Thrusts

Hip Thrusts

Kneeling Squats

Barbell Rollout

Elevated Leg Raises

Mountain Climbers

Single Leg Glute Bridge

Lunges

Walking Lunges

Hip Flexor Stretches to Complement Your Routine

Flexibility is just as important as strength when it comes to healthy hip flexors. So consider adding some of these stretches into your routine:

Tip: Perform these stretches as part of your warm up or cool-down.

Seated Butterfly Stretch

Sit on the floor with the soles of your feet together. Gently press your knees toward the ground while keeping your back straight. Hold for 20–30 seconds.

Runner’s Lunge Stretch

Step one foot forward into a deep lunge, lowering your opposite knee to the ground. Lean forward slightly to stretch the hip flexor of the back leg.

Pigeon Pose

From a plank position, bring one knee forward and place it behind your opposite hand. Extend the back leg straight, and lean into the stretch.

Standing Quad Stretch

Stand on one leg, grabbing the ankle of the opposite leg and pulling it toward your glutes. Keep your knee pointing downward for a deep hip flexor stretch.

Tips for Incorporating Hip Flexor Exercises Into Your Routine

Hip flexor exercises will fit most appropriately into your lower body workout, or an abs and core workout.

Your approach to adding these exercises will depend on what you’re currently doing. If you’re well versed in lifting, have some solid lifting plans that you work with, and just happen to have noticed that you need to strengthen your hip flexor muscles; you can add any of the exercises and stretches above to your routine.

If you need a little more substance, and a more structured plan to follow, consider the following workout categories which are part of our exclusive members only content:

Leg Workout Plans

Bum & Thighs Workout Plans

Abs & Core Workout Plans

Exercises To Strengthen Your Hip Flexor Muscles Conclusion

Strong hip flexors are the secret weapon to better movement, improved posture, and fewer, unnecessary aches and pains.

By incorporating these exercises and stretches into your routine, you’ll not only strengthen this vital muscle group, you will raise your overall fitness game.

Start small, stay consistent, and keep lifting—your hips (and your body) will thank you!