There have been and always will be fitness physique trends. What will it be next? I don’t know, but right now it seems like everyone wants to know how to get rid of hip dips.
While I personally think being comfortable with your body in its current state should be the goal, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with working to change your physique at the same time.
I can love my body, but still work to get leaner and build muscle mass.
Accepting your body is the key to having a healthy approach to fitness. When you are comfortable with how you look now, you won’t be in a rush to get results. This means that you are more likely to take a sustainable approach where you build healthy life habits.
What are hip dips?
Hip dips are the inward curve between below your hips but above your thighs.
Our bone structure is what determines how big our hip dips are.
The wider your hips are, the bigger the distance between your Ilium and Femur bone and the bigger your hip dips are.
Hip dips are not a sign of being over or under weight. It is just our bone structure and there is not a lot we can do about it. You can target muscles around this area, but you will never be able to change your bone structure.
Hip Building Exercises
The two main muscles we want to target are the gluteus minimus and the gluteus medius. They are often overlooked, but are key when training your side hip area and rounding out a great glute workout.
The great thing about hip exercises, is they are also great for strengthening your knee. So if you have weak knees, these are great to include in your leg day routine.
Side lying clam– I love doing this with a band at the end of my workout. I got my loop bands from amazon.
Side lying hip raise
Leg abduction machine- This is a pretty standard piece of equipment. Your gym should definitely have it. If not, you can sit on a bench with a loop band above your knees and move your legs together and apart for the abductions.
Quadruped Hip Abduction (Fire Hydrants)
Curtsy Lunges
Cable hip abduction- This one is done on the cable machine at the gym. Most of the time you will need to bring your own ankle strap attachment. I have this one from amazon. Then, you just lower the cable machine arm as low as it will go and attach the ankle strap. Attach it to your ankle as well. Keep the non attached leg slightly bent while raising the opposite leg. Hold onto the machine for stabilization.
Side lying leg raise
Banded side steps
How often should you do hip exercises?
First of all, these exercises should not make up the bulk of your workout. This is considered accessory work and is something you would typically include toward the end of your workout.
How often you include these types of exercises depends on your current workout schedule.
If you do full body workouts, you can definitely include these at the end of every workout. If you split your workouts by body part, you can include these on leg days.
Truthfully, you could do these every day if you really wanted. What’s important to remember is that you will need to give your body rest.
If you are doing these as a body weight movement, with no weight, your body won’t need as much time to recover and can do these more often. I love adding weight or at least a resistance band to most of these exercises. These are the bands I use; they work great.