End Lower Back Pain

In the video above I am performing a movement known as a hip hinge. A hip hinge is where the top of the thigh bone rotates within a socket of the hip known as the acetabulum.

This particular movement helps to avoid unnecessary bending of the lower spinal area known as the lumbar spine.

Too much bending of the lower spine area can cause herniated or prolapsed discs, which, can also lead to nerve impingement and problems such as sciatica.

To perform a hip hinge

1. Bend your knees ever so slightly

2. Push your butt back and allow your chest to end up parallel to your hips.

3. Your back should be completely flat (or in neutral).

In the video above I am performing a movement known as a hip hinge. A hip hinge is where the top of the thigh bone rotates within a socket of the hip known as the acetabulum.

This particular movement helps to avoid unnecessary bending of the lower spinal area known as the lumbar spine.

Too much bending of the lower spine area can cause herniated or prolapsed discs, which can also lead to nerve impingement and problems such as sciatica.

To perform a hip hinge

1. Bend your knees ever so slightly

2. Push your butt back and allow your chest to end up parallel to your hips.

3. Your back should be completely flat (or in neutral).

You will feel a big stretch in the back of the legs, which is the hamstrings stretching out, and this is perfectly normal and natural, and it just means that you are lacking flexibility in the legs.

A lack of hamstring flexibility is also why people round their backs, because when we try to pick something up, we tend to stop when we feel limited in our mobility, and this is when we bend over.

Unfortunately, a lot of us live very sedentary lives, and we forget about our health, so we tend to make ourselves more injurious because we just stop thinking about our health and therefore we stop taking action.

If we generally move more, we would end up improving our flexibility.

How To Hip Hinge At Home

There are a few ways to do this, the first way is to stand about 1 foot away from a wall at home and push your hips back to the wall, all while keeping your shoulder blades pinched in. Make sure that your knees are slightly bent as you do this to allow for movement in the hips.

You can make it slightly more challenging by putting something light and tall in front of you, such as an empty bin, and practice picking it up as you practise the hip hinge.

You can also hip hinge by holding an object up against your chest. This helps you learn to engage your shoulder blades to keep a more upright chest. As you hinge at the hips, your upper body leans forward, so the object your are holding onto could fall, unless you hold it with your hands right up against your chest and pull your shoulder blades in tight.

Benefits of Hip Hinging

Most of us probably wouldn’t do something unless there was a clear cut benefit for us for doing it.

If you have ever experienced back pain in your life, it is most probably due to lifting something heavy off the floor, moving with incorrect posture, or lifting something heavy off the floor whilst moving with incorrect posture.

An incorrect posture would be rounding the back as you move, which causes too much flexion in the individual vertebrae of the spine, causing potential harm to the discs.

A hip hinge takes all of that unnecessary stress out and actually has you moving only through the hips and knee joint, whilst keeping the spine in its normal position, maintaining structure within the vertebrae themselves.

How Often To Practise Hip Hinging At Home?

There isn’t necessarily an ideal set or rep scheme, I would say that the more you practise the movement while doing general day to day activities, the more of a lifestyle change it will be, leading to more consistency and a more easily learned activity.

Once you learn how to hip hinge to improve your posture and reduce risk of injury, you can move on to a single leg hip hinge.