Importance of Warming Up The Hips

Warming up the hips prior to performing challenging exercises such as squats and deadlifts is absolutely crucial for both injury prevention and performance on the lift you are performing. Although both the deadlift and the squat require flexible hips, they would usually consist of slightly different warm up exercises. It is rare in our daily lives, where we predominantly stand or sit, that we move our hips through their full range of motion, hence why warming up is so important before performing exercises that require us to move load through our full range of motion.

The Warm Up As A Chance To Increase Mobility

The warm up, when done correctly can be a great opportunity to gain increases in mobility. Mobility is the freedom of movement at a joint while being in full control of the movement. In the warm up we will be able to open the hip joint and then gain strength in the new range, hence we are able to, little by little see gains in mobility of the joints.

Different Types of Hip Warm Up Exercises

There are many different categories of warm up exercises to open up the hips and prepare them to squat and deadlift. I try and use a variety of these categories when moving through a warm up. We provide a mix of these categories in the exercises provided in this list.

Loaded Stretching - where a static stretch is performing to open up the joint in question.

Dynamic Warm Up - moving the joint through its range of motion without load;

Activation Exercises - light exercises that take the joint through its range of motion with minimal load.

Implementation of Hip Warm Up Exercises

Hip warm ups are perfect to perform prior to training, but they can also be performed on rest days to keep the hips feeling good. They can also be performed in morning routines where some basic exercises are performed to wake the body up for the day.

Try These 6 Hip Warm Up Exercises Before Squats and Deadlifts