Get a Load of Pain off Your Back: Use Your Hips Instead.

While a cultural icon, eye-grabber, and inspiration for most music today, the glutes and hips don’t really know their jobs in todays workouts. Without the right movement selection and use of technique, those moves you may be doing to blast your booty may be blasting your back, painfully.

Those two arrows could be what’s happening to the disks in your SPINE. READ UP.

Often, many peoples hips are getting tight today due to an office and desk job culture, and when this happens, your body relies more on the back to create what it thinks is the same movement. To understand why your back may be getting hammered in your workouts, here’s some help understanding what your hip girdle should do.

Notice all off the possible movements, and notice that none of them involve your back bending!

A lot of the side-to-side and back in forth thrusting moves you do today may be taken over by your spinal erectors, as opposed to your hips, your big juicy hips (mmmmm, yum). But seriously, there a huge source of power, and one of the biggest muscle groups in your body, use it right, and you’ll keep your muscles safe.

This video has a few hybrid moves that can challenge your hips in different directions, which translates to building a bigger, stronger butt, in all directions.

Some commonly botched moves, that if done correctly, lead to strong glutes and healthy hips, include:

1. The Deadlift(s)
2. The Squat
3. Bridges
4. Side-Bends/Windmills
5. Kettlebell Swings

Using this technique can help you build the external rotation in your hips.

Mastering the hinge in general can help make you make huge progress in relieving back pain, and strengthing your lower body. Deadlifts, RDL’s, pullthroughs, and Kettle bell swings (when done properly), can build a bulletproof back against injury and heavy weights.

Can’t swing your kettle bell right? Try banding it up. The constant tension will force you to use the right muscles of your lower body to swing the kettle bell fiercely.

For helping you get better at pushing your hips out to the side, the lateral lunge, and curtsy lunge can help develop your abillity. these two promote some of the neglected movements of the hip-joint. For healthy hips, the more variety you use, the more you’ll be able to fight for mobillity.

This exercise causes the hip to extend and rotate externally, look at the guide above, and try to think of some common moves yourself. Squats? Deadlifts?

Unlock the power of your hips, work them today. If you’re performing any of your common leg/power exercises, and you see this:

Basically, lol

Lower the weight, or focus on fixing your technique. For questions on how to do this, post them below, or @davidk_fitness on social media(twitter,IG).