The Benefits of Bodyweight Hinge Exercises

Skill Development

The hinge is the most challenging movement pattern in resistance training. It requires both control and mobility in the muscles surrounding the lower back and hips, this can take some time to pick up and perform with precision. Using bodyweight hinge exercises to help with learning the hinge can be a great way to learn without risking injury or ingraining poor movement patterns that will need to be unlearnt.

Here are three bodyweight hinge exercises that you can use for skill development:

Warm Ups

Another huge benefit to bodyweight hinge exercises is using them to correctly warm up for hinge sessions. These exercises will allow you to move through the hinge pattern, which will effectively allow you to warm up both your body but also the skill that you are about to perform. These exercises will also help those who are still in the skill acquisition phase but are ready to lift weights in the hinge movement pattern.

Negatives of Bodyweight Hinge Movements

The hinge is the hardest movement to target with just bodyweight. It requires far more stimulus than the weight of the body can provide. Perhaps for extremely beginners who have been extremely sedentary it will be enough to create an adaptation, but for the vast majority of people it will require an external load in order to create adaptation. As this is the case I have provided some bodyweight exercises can can create some form of stimulus in the lower body.

Bodyweight Exercises to Target the Hamstrings and Posterior Chain

If you searched for bodyweight hinge exercises as you were looking for a way to progress your strength or muscle mass through performing the hinge movement, then you may be disappointed that these exercises will not help you achieve that goal. So I wanted to provide a few bodyweight exercises that you can use to achieve the goal of improving strength and muscle mass in the posterior chain.