How to Deadlift pt 1: The Hip Hinge

Hip hinging is a foundational aspect of common exercises - deadlifting, squatting, lunging, and much more. Building a proper hip hinge allows you to strengthen your glutes, quads, and hamstrings, along with your upper and lower back muscles. All of which is going to give you more power running, cycling or even carrying in the groceries. 

If you look at cycling posture, your body is essentially in a hip hinge pattern, as you move into a more aero position you have to hinge even further. Therefore building strength in this position is going to directly translate into better use of your glutes and quads throughout your pedal stroke. 

With running your glutes and calves are the main muscles that propel you forward, emphasizing these muscles in your strength training will help you increase speed while decreasing risk of compensation and injury down the road. 

To properly build your hip hinge, there are 3 stages you want to focus on:

1. Mobility: Rule one is to always make sure you have the mobility and range of motion to complete an exercise without compensations. 

2. Strength: Gradually progress through exercise selection and resistance to ensure progressive overload while maintaining proper form.  

3. Endurance: As an endurance athlete, your body is in the same, or similar, position for hours on end. Our muscles need to be trained accordingly to handle that load in order to compete at the level you want to compete at. 

Mobility Test

To test your mobility all you need is a PVC stick, broom stick, or even a golf club. You’re going to hold it vertically against your spine, maintaining 3 points of contact. Back of your head, shoulder blades, and top of your hip.

Hold that position and hinge backwards, you should be able to maintain those 3 points of contact throughout the entire movement.

If you’re having difficulty maintaining the contact points you may want to work on mobility before adding resistance or weight to your deadlift or squat

If you neck or upper back is pulling off the stick you want to focus on upper back mobility, specifically extension:

The prayer stretch is a great exercise to work spine extension, while stretching your lats and rotator cuff muscles. You can use your hands or that same PVC stick you used to test your mobility.

If your hips come off the bar, focusing on lower back mobility and hamstring stretching will help address this issue: