By Kevin O'Neill, MS, CSCS

Originally Published by Elite Fitness Systems

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The purpose of this article is to emphasize the lack of hip flexor strength training amongst today’s athletes and coaches.  Through my experience working with athletes in a variety of sports I have come to the belief that athletes and coaches do not train the hip flexors for strength gains nearly enough as they should.  I feel as though many coaches make a consistent effort to increase their athlete’s hip flexibility, but sometimes fail to adequately strengthen this muscle group.

So why am I professing hip flexor strength?  The stronger the hip flexors, (along with the hamstrings and glutes), the faster the athlete is going to be.  Strong hip flexors allow for a faster and more powerful forward leg movement and upward knee drive.  I am not trying to diminish the importance of lateral movement in sports, but forward leg movement is huge in athletics.  If you’re not moving forward, you’re not gaining ground.

Hip flexor strength not only aides in performance, but also in injury prevention.  Another important role of the hip flexors is functioning as brakes to the hamstrings when they are exerting a high amount of force. “Moreover, it is important to note that reciprocal inhibition of the antagonist usually occurs whenever an agonist is strongly activated.  In other words, the antagonist invariably relaxes when the agonist contracts, except when the action is extremely rapid and some antagonists come into play to prevent joint damage due to the large momentum of the moving limb” (Siff).

To make this point a little more applicable to every day life: “It is the same safety precaution you would take if driving a car.  Imagine if you had a car that could go 150 mph but brakes that could only stop you at 100 mph or slower.  Would you drive 150 mph?” (Cunningham).

I am not trying to preach the importance of muscle balance here.  I am more focused on the hip extensor-hip flexor agonist-antagonist relationship and making that relationship as strong as possible.  I am tired of articles stating that one muscle must equal X % output of another muscle.  I could reference numerous EFS Q&A responses stating “bring up your weaknesses.”  That makes sense to me.  No percentages. Just make everything stronger.  Bottom line.

Stepping away from the technical aspect, the importance of hip flexor strength is observed when watching athletes perform.  I wish I was able to work with and test the hip flexors of former Houston Oilers running back Earl Campbell.  Every time I have seen a video clip of him it seems like he was running over some poor soul.  He would put his head down and bring his knee right through the defender’s body.  The same can be said about running back Roger Craig.  He wasn’t the biggest back, but every time I saw him running in traffic his knees were up around his chest somewhere, making him very tough to bring down.

Strong hip flexors are not solely beneficial to football.  Hockey and lacrosse players need to quite often skate and run through contact.  The baseball player getting his first step out of the box or off a base will benefit from strong hip flexors.  As will the basketball player exploding for his first step out of his triple threat position.  MMA fighters benefit from hip flexor strength when throwing knees and kicks.  Sprinters need extremely strong hip flexors and without them might as well be joggers or speed walkers (tremendous oxymoron).

Stronger hip flexors have also been proven to enhance performance in sprints and shuttle runs.  Take this excerpt from an article on the topic: “Individuals in the training group improved hip flexion strength by 12.2% and decreased their 40-yd and shuttle run times by 3.8% and 9.0%, respectively.  An increase in hip flexion strength can help to improve sprint and agility performance for physically active, untrained individuals.” (Deane et al.)  While this study was done on untrained people, the results show the benefits of hip flexor strength training.  I know athletes are not untrained, but I do believe they are under trained, in this area.

So, how do we strengthen the all important hip flexors?  Below is a list of just a few exercises for strengthening the hip flexors:

• Spread Eagle Sit-ups: these are mentioned quite often on the EFS site. Start by lying on your back. Spread your legs and while keeping them straight, hook your feet on the vertical support beams of a power rack. Then perform a straight leg sit up. For more resistance hold a weight or dumbbell. If you don’t have a power rack, use a Smith Machine, which I also use for stretching my lats and hanging my bands on the end so I don’t need to bend over and pick them off the floor and risk pulling tight hamstrings. These are three instances where using the Smitty is acceptable, along with any other activity where the bar doesn’t move.

• Hanging Knee / Leg Raises: while hanging from a pull up bar or some other apparatus, keep upper body straight. You can either bend your legs and bring your knees to your chest, or keep your legs straight and bring the toes to the ceiling with the legs parallel to the floor. For added resistance you can hold a dumbbell or kettlebell with your feet.

• Incline / Flat Bench Leg Raises: basically the same exercise as above, but you are adjusting the angle to make it a little easier. Lie supine on the bench and hold onto the bench behind your head. Then perform the leg raises with either straight or bent legs.

• Cable / Band Knee Drive: this is my personal favorite. Use the ankle cuff cable attachment and attach it to the low cable pulley. Put a bench or box out in front of you and place both hands on it. You want your body to look like that of sprinter while taking off out of the blocks. Make sure you are far enough away from the cable so when your leg is straight there is still tension on it and the weight stacks do no touch. While keeping a flat back, ballisticly drive the knee forward and up in front of your chest. Stay in control of the weight on the negative so it doesn’t jerk your leg at the end This is most certainly not a TUT exercise, but you need to be smart about it. Also, focus on keeping the ankle cocked in dorsi-flexion. You can also do this with a band instead of the cable. Just find something solid to hook the band on. I like using the bands because they force you to really accelerate as the movement progresses.

• Lying Cable Knee Drive: same principle as above exercise. While lying on your back attach your ankle cuffs to the low cable pulley and bring both knees to the chest.

Forward Sled Dragging: another one popular on the EFS site.  Using the sled strap attachment, place a loop around each foot.  Proceed to walk straight ahead.

To summarize a few things, I am not saying that hip flexor strength alone will make an athlete fast.  Hip extension and posterior chain work is also essential.  I just don’t feel that it is as severely neglected as its counterpart.

Another point not to be forgotten, but is beyond the scope of this article, is the need to stretch the hip flexors.  Tight hip flexors can be a huge issue with so many athletes, thus hindering performance.  All this strengthening I am preaching will have you walking around looking like you didn’t fully evolve unless you stretch those puppies.

References

-Cunningham, Christine. “Training Speed - Are You Training the Right Muscles”.

-Training & Conditioning, May / June 2001.

-Deane, Russell S., Chow, John W., Tillman, Mark D., Fournier, Kim A. “Effects of Hip Flexor Training on Sprint, Shuttle Run, and Vertical Jump Performance”

-The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research Volume: 19 Issue: 3 Pages: 615-621

-Mel Siff Supertraining Archives. www.groups.google.com/group/siff-archive

-Siff, Mel. Supertraining. 2000. 5th edition. Denver, CO.