382: The Importance of Hip Strength for Runners

In this solo episode of the Real Life Runners Podcast, I dive into a topic that's close to my heart as a physical therapist with 17 years of experience—hip strength and stability, and how they play a critical role in both enhancing your running performance and reducing the risk of injuries. We'll explore the anatomy and function of key hip muscles, focusing particularly on the gluteus medius, which is essential for maintaining pelvic stability during your running gait cycle. I’ll break down how weak hip muscles can negatively impact your running efficiency and lead to common injuries. Plus, I’ll share some practical exercises like Bulgarian split squats and single-leg deadlifts, which are excellent for strengthening your hips. And don’t worry, I’ll also cover dynamic warmups like high knees and butt kicks that can help improve your running form and efficiency. By the end of the episode, my goal is for you to walk away with a better understanding of how to recognize the signs of weak hips and how to build a routine that strengthens those muscles, ultimately helping you run more efficiently and for longer.

00:04 The Importance of Hip Strength for Runners

01:59 Understanding Core Strength Beyond Abs

04:44 The Role of Hip Muscles in Running

06:47 Breaking Down the Gait Cycle

10:57 The Science Behind Muscle Activation

13:47 Understanding Hip Muscle Coordination

14:32 Impact of Hip Weakness on Running Efficiency

19:50 Essential Strength Training Exercises for Runners

21:31 Single Leg Strength Exercises

22:34 Advanced Hip Stabilization Drills

25:08 Dynamic Warmups and Training Frequency

Are you a woman over 40 who is ready to train in a way that helps you get stronger and faster without breaking your body down? 

If so, Press Play is OPEN this week (for a few days only)!

Check out the details here!

Press Play will help you train in a way that makes you stronger, improves your energy, and skyrockets your confidence in ways you can’t even imagine. Enrollment closes on THURSDAY!

Thanks for Listening!!

Be sure to hit FOLLOW on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player

Leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Your ratings and reviews really help and we read each one!

Grab your free Strength Guide for Runners here.

Interested in our coaching program? Check out our coaching options here.

Grab your free copy of the Running Snapshot by clicking here.

Come find us on Instagram and say hi!

Don't forget: The information on this website is not intended to treat or diagnose any medical condition or to provide medical advice. It is intended for general education in the areas of health and wellness. All information contained in this site is intended to be educational in nature. Nothing should be considered medical advice for your specific situation.

Transcript

Angie: 2:05

Welcome to the Real Life Runners Podcast, episode number 382. Today we're talking about the importance of hip strength for runners to help you run faster, run longer, and avoid injury. Stay tuned. What's up, runners? Welcome to today's show. It's another solo episode, so you have just me, Dr. Angie Brown, here with you today because Kevin has a cold, and because of that cold, he has no voice. And so Kevin's no voice does not really blend well with the podcast. So I've decided to do a solo episode for you again this week. And today I'm going to talk about a topic that is very important, very near and dear to my heart as a physical therapist. I've been practicing PT now for over 17 years. I've been working with runners of all ages for that entire time. And one of the biggest issues that I see with runners. are weak hips. And there are so many problems that can be fixed and addressed by strengthening the hips and improving the mobility and the control in the hips. So in today's episode, we're going to be diving into why hip strength is essential for runners. What muscles make up the hips and how they function during the different phases. of running. So if you've ever dealt with any injuries or if you have ever seen photos or videos of yourself running and you're like, why do I look like that when I run? This episode is for you. So before we jump into all of the details, I want you to understand why we're talking about hips. So the hips, when we talk about core strength and core control in runners, a lot of people tend to think about the abdominal region and they think about their abs, but abs are not your core. That is part of your core for sure, but it's not the full picture. So when I think of what makes up the core, I think of pretty much all of the muscles on the torso or that, that are attached to the torso. And so that is the abdominal muscles, your back muscles, even up, into your shoulder muscles, your shoulder blades, the muscles that help control your shoulder blades, and especially the hips, like to me, the hips are the most crucial part of the core. Yes, your abs are important. Yes, your back muscles are important. All of these things are important. There's no muscle in your body that's not important. All of them play a role and play a function. And so when we think about running, The hips to me are really the key to all of it because when you have weak hips You often will have inefficient running form and ultimately injury because when your hips are weak as they get tired Your form starts to break down. Okay, that's what happens as you run because a lot of people We'll be fine if they're running a mile, a couple of miles, three, four miles. But then they start to train for a marathon, a half marathon, and they start to extend those distances. And what happens to a lot of runners, unfortunately, is that they end up injured. So why is that happening? Why does running cause so many injuries in people? And in my, all of my years of physical therapy, the answer pretty much comes down to one thing and that is weakness and lack of muscle control, because when your muscles are weak, maybe they're strong to a point and that's why you're okay for a few miles, but as you start to get into those longer runs, when you're getting up 5, 6, 7, 8 miles into your training, Your muscles are fatiguing. And so if you're not building muscle strength and you're not building muscle endurance, which is different than cardiovascular endurance, your muscles have to also have endurance and be able to continuously fire to help stabilize your body as you're running. So if you don't have that endurance, Then your form starts to break down, your knees start to collapse, which causes more strain on muscles and tissues. And your body is essentially operating in a way that it's not programmed to operate that the lines of pull and the forces on the body and the forces on the joints, the forces on the muscles, all of those things change as the body, as the muscles fatigue during your running. So part of the way to prevent running injuries is to strengthen your muscles. And so today, let's jump in to talking about the breakdown of the hip muscles, what the hip muscles do during our running gait, and which ones we really want to focus on. I'll start out by telling you that All of your muscles are important. They all matter. They're all involved in the gait cycle. So when I say gait, I am spelling that G A I T, not G A T E. So the gait cycle is like your walking cycle or your running cycle. So some of the major muscles of the hip that we're going to talk about today are the gluteus maximus. Okay, that's the big muscle in your butt. And that is responsible for hip extension and external rotation. So that's pulling the leg behind you and then rotating your leg out, like toes out position. The gluteus medius and gluteus minimus are underneath the gluteus maximus and their main actions are to abduct. So pull your leg out to the side and they also help to stabilize the pelvis and control rotation of the femur. As well, which is your main thigh bone, whether we have your hip flexors, we have your hip adductors, which are responsible for pulling that leg into the body, and then there's some rotators and some other things along the way. All of these muscles play key roles In the gate cycle, because yes, all of them do these different things. And if you look at each muscle in isolation, you can say, okay the piriformis is an external rotator, which is true. It helps with rotating the leg and, helping your leg to go into a toes out position. However, during the gate cycle, that's not what it's doing. During the gate cycle, it's contracting to help stabilize the leg and the pelvis so that your body, It doesn't just collapse on itself, right? So these muscles have certain actions that work when they are just working and isolated on their own. And then they also have kind of their teamwork role, right? They all have a role to play when we're walking and we're running and those things can be a little bit different. So when we're running, we're going to talk a little bit about what happens during the running cycle. Okay? Okay. Because. I want you to just understand this a little bit from a scientific perspective. I'm going to try to keep this as less scientific as possible, but I am going to start, using some muscle terms because, why not? It's fun. You can learn some new things today and you can talk about it with your running friends when you're out on the run. Why not, right? So basically what happens as we run forward there are one foot hits the ground in front of us. That's called initial contact or heel strike. And so when that foot hits the ground, and actually I just said out in front of you, which is not true, it should actually be landing underneath your body because if it's landing out in front of you, that can actually cause an increased risk of injury that's over striding. So that's one of the problems that we want to avoid. So when that first foot hits the ground, it should actually be landing underneath you. Your glutes during this part of the gait cycle, your gluteus medius is really active because it's helping to stabilize the pelvis to prevent it from dropping. So all of your weight when you're landing on that side, all of your weight is on one leg and your other leg. Is up in the air and so it's really important because your glutes specifically your gluteus medius Helps to stabilize your pelvis. So I want you to think of your pelvis as like a tabletop So if you think of your pelvis as like a flat tabletop if the gluteus medius is weak on one side The tabletop kind of shifts to the opposite side. You get this stretching of the gluteus medius because it's not contracting strong enough. And so your tabletop kind of shifts and tilts so that your pelvis drops on the opposite side. So if you've ever seen pictures of your body, During running when you are running or walking and you notice that one hip is higher than the other There's a likelihood that you have weakness in your gluteus medius Okay, your gluteus medius is not able to stabilize your hips and your pelvis enough during that gait cycle Your gluteus maximus, which is your main muscle in your glutes, begins to engage and helps to control that forward momentum. So it starts to essentially contract isometrically just to stabilize the body as the foot is hitting the ground. So then. And as right after you hit the ground, your body starts to move forward, right? And that's called mid stance and your glutes and your abductor muscles help to control that leg again, trying to keep that pelvis level and preventing excessive knee valgus, which is that knee collapsing in towards the other leg. So if you've ever seen a picture of yourself and you notice that when you're standing on one leg with the other leg up in the air. If your knee is caving in towards your other leg, that's a problem because that is putting more pressure specifically on the inside of your knee and the outside of your hip. So if that's happening again, this could mean that you have weakness in your glute muscles, specifically gluteus medius and some of your other glute your other hip rotators that help to stabilize the pelvis. Because not only can that knee collapse towards the other leg, it can also rotate to inward. So like your kneecap, if you look at where your kneecap is your kneecap pointing forward? Is it slightly out or is it like Tilting in or twisting inward toward the other leg. That can give you an idea of where you might have weakness and what you might want to look at. Then we go from that stance where we have all of our weight on that one leg. And then that leg starts to move behind us as our other leg swings through and then that leg, our stance leg, the leg that has all of our weight goes into what's called toe off or push off. So our gluteus maximus, that main power muscle, starts to engage to extend the hip or pull the leg behind us and power forward push off. During that time, our other muscles are again, stabilizing the leg to help maintain that or to allow the gluteus maximus to be in the best alignment to create the most power forward. Okay. I hope this is making sense. I don't have Kevin here. He's usually my, he listens in and make sure that everything that I'm saying is understandables that I don't get to too technical and start to talk over anybody's head. So hopefully you're following along here. And then after that leg extends fully behind you, then we go into what's called swing phase. And so the muscles, your hip flexors, which are the muscles on the front of your hips, those start to engage to pull the leg forward. So that pulls your knee forward and pulls your knee up. And your glutes and your hamstrings are now active on the other leg. So it's like you're basically when you think about the running gait, you're essentially jumping from one leg to another, and you're all of this is happening. The average, we talk about cadence and how many steps per minute you take. There's that ideal gold standard number of 180 steps per minute, which that's Again, if you're any, that's not necessary. It's not that everyone runner needs to shoot for 180 steps per minute, but the range is essentially 160 steps per minute to 200 steps per minute is the ideal range, which is a pretty large range. And one 80 is in the middle of that. So we just use one 80. So if you say, okay, I take 180 steps every minute. That means you're landing on one leg 90 times in 60 seconds. So all of these. Muscle actions are happening in less than a second, so in less than a second, all of these muscles need to turn on, they need to stabilize your body, and then they have to propel you forward, so you can understand then all of these things that kind of all have to happen simultaneously, and in a very rapid way. Like in order in efficient manner, if your muscles are weak, or if one of them turns on late, or if they does, it doesn't fully turn on, right? People talk about activating your glutes. Your glutes are always active. It's not that you have to activate your glutes. If your glutes weren't active, you would fall on the ground and you wouldn't even be able to stand up and walk, okay? So it's not that your glutes are inactive or not active. It's that the timing of the contraction might be slightly off. And so that leads to a less efficient running gate because your muscles are like, it's like they're just lazy, right? If you think about the lazy people that help out, we all have that, whether it's at work or at school, like we have the slackers. So some of your muscles sometimes are acting like slackers, like they're not turning on when you're working. Quick enough. They're like, Oh, shoot. Like I'm a little late here. I'm late to the game. Anybody have kids trying to get them ready for school in the morning? Like you always have one that's usually ready. And another one that's still putting on their socks and shoes as you're walking out the door. So that's what can happen with our muscles. So we have a combination of weakness that can be affecting the way that they operate and also. the, their timing, right? The, how quickly they turn on, how quickly they turn off. So these are the things that we can start to train with weight training, with plyometrics, with some of the other running drills and things that we do. So when your hip muscles aren't strong enough, or if they're not properly coordinated, you lose that running efficiency and your body then compensates elsewhere. So when. One muscle's not doing its job. Think about when you're at work, if one of your coworkers is not doing their job, it's not usually the case that job just doesn't get done. What usually happens? Someone else comes along and picks up the slack, right? Someone else comes in and is okay so and so didn't do their job. I guess I'm going to have to do it. And that's what happens in your body as well. If one muscle's not Doing his job properly or well enough other muscles kick in to help out and this is what leads to common issues like knee pain or IT band syndrome tightness in certain areas because Certain muscles are doing the job That other muscles aren't doing so there's some muscles that are activated even when they shouldn't be and so again This is this leads to poor timing decreased coordination with our muscles and that can lead ultimately to running injuries Which is obviously what we don't want. And so this is one of the reasons why Weakness in your hips and not just weakness because weakness is a big part of it. If you don't have the strength and the control in your hips to help stabilize your pelvis, that's going to lead to a lot of problems, right? Like weakness in your glutes often leads to hip drop at which increases the stress on your knees and your lower legs. That leads to a lot of knee issues, hip issues, lower back issues, all sorts of different things. But weakness in your hips also can lead to overuse injuries. Like I just mentioned, because like things like it band syndromes shin splints, plantar fasciitis oftentimes like, and yes, I just said plantar fasciitis, which is an issue in your foot, but that can often stem from weakness in your hips because. If the hips aren't doing their job, the calves have to jump in more, and other muscles are jumping in to help, and so you're increasing the stress and the strain on tissues that should not be doing the job that they're currently doing. So then those tissues tend to get overworked, and that's what leads to Overuse injuries. So hopefully you're starting to see how all of these things tie together. So weakness in the hips can lead to injury and then also poor control, poor muscle control in the hips, which can, it's definitely related to weakness, right? Like oftentimes when you have weakness, you also have a reduced muscle control, but sometimes you can have. Pretty strong muscles, but the coordination is just off. And like I mentioned that those muscles aren't turning on or turning off at the proper times. So that can lead to injury as well. Okay. So this is one of the reasons why hip weakness and hip control, hip stability, and mobility are all related to injuries. And they're also all related to your performance, because if your hips are weak and other muscles are jumping in to help. Stabilize the body, stabilize your hips, stabilize your pelvis as you're running, those muscles now are going to fatigue more quickly. Because they're not only being used to do their job, they're jumping in to help out with what the glutes are supposed to be doing, with what the hip stabilizers are supposed to be doing. They're not doing their job well enough, so now the other muscles are jumping in, so they're on more than they should be, so they're going to fatigue quicker as well. So that can lead to decreased endurance, that can lead to slower times there's a lot of things that can happen from that, right? So it might not just be injuries. Injuries is a big issue that is often caused by weakness and with lack of muscle control. But you can also just notice decreases in your performance because other muscles are doing the jobs that they shouldn't be doing. So they're getting tired more quickly. All right. So hopefully all of that is making sense. So what do we want to do? Okay. Obviously we now understand What our hip muscles are, what they do during our running gait and how weakness in those hip muscles can lead to injury. So how can strong hips, if we strengthen up those hips, how can that improve our performance? Okay, so when we strengthen our hips and we start to work on that muscle control specifically, In single leg stance, like when we are working on single leg muscle control that will lead to better alignment and better running form. So when your hips are strong and they turn on when they're supposed to turn on and turn off when they're supposed to turn off as you land on that leg during running, your hips and your pelvis are now stable and that tabletop is level so they turn on. You're stable, you're good, and you keep moving forward. So it's going to prevent that inward knee collapse that so many runners are having, which can then decrease the strain on your knees. It can decrease the strain on your foot and ankle. Decreases the strain on your hips and your lower back. And allow, so when it decreases all of that, and Now your muscles have the energy to propel you forward. So you're going to be able to perform better. It's going you're going to notice Improved endurance and improved speed because your body's not wasting energy just trying to stabilize itself This is also going to help increase your running efficiency when your hips are stronger. You're gonna be able to Transfer that forced directly into forward movement, right? You're wasting less energy trying to stabilize the body. So now you have more energy and your muscles are able to produce more force to move you forward faster and longer, stronger hips are always also going to lead to fewer injuries, quicker recovery. And like I mentioned, improved endurance because you're not wasting all that energy. So now that you understand. What's going on here and how important it is for you to strengthen your hips. Let's talk about what you need to do. So the first thing you need to do is get on a generalized strength training plan. Okay. That's number one. You need to be doing. Big lifts, heavy lifts. You need to be lifting heavy. This is one of those myths that is, has been debunked and has been, continuously you're starting to hear more of it out in the media, which is fantastic. People used to say that, runners didn't need to lift heavy weights. Runners needed to do lightweights and low rep or low, sorry. Low weights, high repetitions to help improve muscle endurance, which I mean, can be helpful depending on which exercise you're doing, but you also want to make sure that you are building muscle and building muscle strength through heavy lifting. The other thing, so after, your general, when I look at. general strength training. I think of like our big muscles and our big compound movements. So things like squats which produce a vertical force, things like deadlifts, which produce more of a horizontal force. And then we want to make sure that we are also stabilizing in rotation. And we also want to make sure that we're doing upper body exercises as well, because Running is a full body activity, and so we need to be making sure that we're doing core exercises, trunk exercises, shoulder exercises to help improve our posture, because again, if the body is stronger, if your muscles are stronger, you're going to waste less energy, so you're going to have more energy to help propel you forward faster and longer, okay? After you start to get consistent with a generalized strength program, Actually, I just shouldn't say afterwards. You should also that's part one. Okay. There's a couple of different parts. So that's part number one is that you're, you want to make sure that you're doing some of those bigger compound lifts. The second thing that you absolutely need to do as a runner are single leg strength exercises. Running like I mentioned is essentially jumping from one leg to another running as a single leg activity There's no point in the running cycle where you are on two feet at the same time trying to you know Propel yourself with two feet forward you are jumping from one leg to another cycling over and over again and so your body needs to understand how to Stabilize and propel itself forward So some great single leg exercises would be Bulgarian split squats. Okay, this is essentially where the back leg is elevated on a bench or on a chair and you squat down and then push back up. Step ups are a fantastic exercise. Single leg deadlifts are one of my favorites and also single leg squats or single leg sit to stands. Those are some exercises that I think are absolutely essential that we need to be doing as runners on a weekly basis. Okay. At least once a week, all of those single leg exercises. We also need to be incorporating hip stabilization drills. So if you ever gone, have, if you've ever gone to see a physical therapist, You may have been prescribed clamshells and clamshells are an exercise to help strengthen your hip external Rotators to help those muscles that help to stabilize the hip during gait, which okay clamshells is a fine level one exercise However at no point in time will you be lying down? During the running cycle, right? You're never gonna be lying down and rotating your leg out to the side You're also never going to be rotating, like consciously and purposely rotating your knee out to the side, like in that clamshell most motion when you're standing. However, it is important for you to strengthen your hip external rotators. And that's the step one to do it. So clamshells are a good place to start, but then we want to move into stabilization exercises in a standing position so that. Our body understands how to stabilize when we're weight bearing as well, right? People, this is one of the reasons why people like to hate on clamshells in, social media. They're like, oh, clamshells are worthless exercises. They're not. They're great level 1 exercises, but they're not what you should be doing. When you're in level five or six, you should be doing more complex exercises, more functional types of exercises that mimic the positions that you're in during running. Okay, so an example of that would be, standing on one leg and balancing while you're swinging the other leg forward. and backward, right? That's essentially what you're asking the hip to do. Another thing you can do are lateral step ups or lateral step taps where you're standing on a step and you lower down and tap your heel on the ground and then come back up. That's a great single leg stabilization exercise. So there's lots of different things, as a PT, I can come up with these exercises all day long, right? And this is one of the benefits of working with a running coach, especially if you're running coaches, a physical therapist, there's, it's not just me, like there's other, PTs and running coaches out there that can help guide you in this. And I'm friends with a bunch of them. But that's one of the benefits is that we can take our physical therapy knowledge of the body and the way that the body moves and give you some of those exercises and help you progress from level one. To level two and then three and then four, et cetera, so that you're continuing to challenge yourself in a progressive and functional manner as you get stronger. So that your body is more able to tolerate the demands of running. Other great things that you need to be doing dynamic warmups. So things like running drills can help to improve your running form, your running efficiency. efficiency. It can also help with those quicker types of movements. So things like high knees, butt kicks karaoke's are often some good things that we give to our runners to help warm up their hips. Those can really help to open up the hips. So working on both mobility, the way that your hip moves and then stability and strength as well. Those are some of the main areas that you want to look at when it comes to hip strengthening. So then people ask me, how often should I be doing this? I say you should be strength training as a runner minimum two times per week I definitely recommend three times per week even up to four times per week depending on what your current training cycle is on So if you're currently race training You can probably do like more to two to three times a week if you're working on building strength, maybe three to four so it just depends on what you're doing And if you have questions reach out, you can find me over on instagram at real life runners You reach out, let me know what you think of this episode. If you have any questions let me know because that's my whole goal. My whole goal with this podcast, with the company, with the social media, all of this stuff is to help more runners to feel better and not experience the pain and the injuries and all the things that would make you have to go see a physical therapist, right? Like you have a coach and a physical therapist that can help guide you before it becomes an issue. Hopefully, after this episode, you have an understanding now of what your hip strength entails, why your hip strength is so important, what you can do to start improving your hip strength, and if you have any questions, please reach out and let me know. If you found this episode helpful, I would love, love, love for you to share it with a friend, for you to leave us a review on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or to share it to social media so that we can just help more runners to feel better and achieve their running goals. And as always, thanks for joining us today. This has been the real life runners podcast. I should say, thanks for joining me today because Kevin wasn't here. This has been the real life runners podcast episode number 382. Now get out there and run your life.