You read it in the title. The #1 serious, all-time, do-not-ignore-this advice that I have for every runner is right up there. Work on your hips and glutes. If you don’t, you’ll regret it. Every single injury I’ve had that lasted longer than a week can be traced directly to my weak hips and glutes.
The thing about weak hips and glutes is that the weakness impacts other parts of the body. The PT I saw at the free clinic explained to me that a lot of runners have strong quads and hamstrings but weak glutes and hip flexors. What happens, as I understand it, is that the quads and glutes and hip flexors are supposed to work together to keep your legs in alignment when you’re running (as in, feet pointed forward, etc). But when you have weak hip flexors and glutes, the other muscles in the legs compensate.
But they can only compensate for so long, and as those muscles get fatigued, the legs can start to come out of alignment. It’s not something you’d notice from the outside. But if you have totally weak hip flexors (like, I could not resist a feather’s worth a of pressure from the PT) eventually the femurs won’t stay in alignment after a while (eight or so miles). They turn inward. But the brain and body don’t like your feet to be turned inward along with the femurs, so the brain naturally keeps your feet pointed straight while your legs are turned in.
And as you run like this, for miles and miles, it starts to put pressure on other parts of the legs. I have pain on the outer sides of my feet (right now, the right foot). Some people have pain in their knees or shins or lower back. I had months of pain from my groin injury because my weak muscles were trying to compensate for the healing muscle. The pain didn’t go away until I spent weeks in therapy strengthening…my hip flexors and glutes.
Of course, I didn’t realize that this weakness would eventually affect me again until now.
I’m going to make a brief departure to tell you that this situation is the most frustrating thing in the world. I’m basically trapped at a 5k or less, and I probably have to take a couple weeks off totally. And this, my friends, makes me so angry. I am SO SICK of having the rug pulled out from under me on this that I can hardly stand it, and the frustration runs at a kind of constant simmer in my gut. I’m about ready to hulk out of my own skin. And there’s nothing to do — NOTHING — except do my daily exercises and wait for the pain to finally go away. Which will probably take AT LEAST A MONTH. I’m pretty behind on training for the races I paid a bunch of money for in May, and it’s not awesome.
Trust me, you want to avoid this so badly, you just don’t even know it.
So.
Here’s my current plan for getting strong hips and glutes.
Hip and Glute Exercises: Do These Before It’s Too Late
I’m combining two sets of exercises that I found online. Both articles reference the same study, but one article pumps up the moves with a resistance band.
The first set is from a Runner’s World article on this very subject.
Please consult these articles for better descriptions on how to do this, along with pictures. I’m not a PT pro or anything like that, so don’t try and follow my probably-not-excellent descriptions. These are just here to give you an idea of what I’m doing every day to the sounds of DJ Khaled.
1. Seated external rotator.
This I had to jury-rig my weight bench for since I don’t have a table that I can really sit on. You wrap a resistance band around one side of the bench, wrap the other end around your foot, and then, keeping your knees together, you lift the foot with the band out to the side, hold, and bring it back down. Repeat on the other side.
2. Standing hip flexor.
With this, you attach the resistance band to the weight bench, wrap it around your foot, and then face away from where it’s attached. Then you raise up your foot, hold, and bring it back down. Repeat on the other side.
3. Standing hip abductor.
Again, you attach the resistance band to the weight bench and wrap it around your foot. You want to stand parallel to the weight bench so that the foot with the band is the farthest from the bench, and the band crosses slightly in front of you. You keep the other foot slightly behind. Then you raise up the leg with the band, hold, and release. Repeat on the other side.
The second set of exercises comes from a Running Times article. The article also includes a standing hip abduction (which I do with the resistance band from the first set) and a hip flexion move (which I haven’t added yet). There are also a couple “advanced moves” that include a standing lunge (which I already do all the time) and single-leg bridging.
4. The bridge.
You know what a bridge is; you lay down with knees bend and then raise your hips so your body is in a straight line. Repeat. You can also do these with your feet on a stability ball.
5. Leg raise.
This is exactly what it sounds like. You lay down with one knee bent, then raise the other to a 45-degree angle with your foot flexed. Hold and lower.
6. Hip extension.
This is basically a superman move, but you don’t raise your arms. Instead, you just lay on your stomach, lift one leg, and hold for two seconds. Then lower.
7. Hip abduction.
This is the classic move from all the old workout videos. You lay on your side with your legs straight, use one arm to brace yourself, and lift up your leg like a pair of scissors. Hold, and lower.
8. Lateral walks with resistance band.
This is the exercise originally suggested to me by the PT. I put a medium-strength resistance band loop around my thighs. Then I stand in a basketball defensive position. A key here is to remain bent forward at the waist; if you don’t, it doesn’t do anything. I stand with my feet a little wider than my hips with my toes pointed out slightly. Then I step across the room sideways, ALWAYS MAINTAINING TENSION ON THE BAND. I can’t find a decent picture of how to do this, so don’t take my word on this exercise. Ask a professional. Do not hurt yourself on account of my non-professionalness.
How To Do Start Doing These
Both articles suggest the following schedule for people who are already having a problem. On the first day, do one set of 10 reps for each exercise. For the exercises that work the legs separately, do 10 reps per side, and do all 10 reps before you switch sides. On the second day, do two sets of 10 reps for each exercise. By the fourth day, you should be doing three sets of 10 reps.
If you’re not having a problem, the articles say that two or three times a week for this kind of routine would be good.
I am currently doing four sets of 10 reps for each exercise. It takes, in total, about 40 minutes, and it is not that easy.
I’ll be honest with you. Doing these exercises for 40+ minutes every day is tedious. No matter how loudly I blast my rap music, it’s kind of boring because of all the counting, and my legs burn after a while. That’s why I stopped keeping up with these kinds of things (they are quintessential PT exercises you’ll find anywhere) after I got done with therapy last year.
But you know what’s way worse? Not being able to run or train or try for a PR because you’re dealing with foot pain that is not really due to a problem with your foot. Being sidelined is frustrating and hard.
If I can give everyone one piece of advice, it would be to start doing these kinds of exercises a few times a week, even though they are not exciting or super fun. It might not seem necessary at the beginning, but I can pretty much guarantee that if you have weak hips and glutes, at some point it will come back to bite you, and it will not be convenient, and it will not be a welcome break, and you will spend a lot of time sulking about it and then listening to rap music.
Get strong hips and glutes. For your future self, if nothing else.
P.S. Runner’s World just tweeted another article with glute exercises. Looks like I’ll be spending more than 40 minutes today.