Hip Lock Exercise. Why use it?
This exercise has become quite popular. Before Franz Bosch had popularised the name I had never heard of it. Yet I was prescribing single leg squats, hitch lifts, progressive run drills, Pilates and low and high intensity plyometrics to improve “hip stability” for want of better word. Like the hamstring tantrums in last review of exercises, the hip lock has many variations. So I think it is important to define for this blog article what a hip lock exercise is. My interpretation of the hip lock, as popularised in social media and in Franz Bosch publications. A number of exercises that are similar are just running drills and not strictly a hip lock. For example rapid switching exercises in free standing. I will then try a find a written definition. I remember in 1987 buying a Physiotherapy book with rehabilitation exercises. I liked an exercise in the book. This was lying on the ground at almost full extension and doing a one leg bridge both dynamically and isometric. It now is often called a Bosch glute bridge. Scratch my head a little sometimes.
Okay let’s find a few you tubes and examples of how I have interpreted hip locks. First is a you tube promoting a Bosch trip to Australia and some excellent stuff. Plus the hip lock principle interspersed.
From this you tube I took an image with a hip model that probably highlights the hip lock principle more.
I need to define this because my interpretation of the hip lock exercise is to ultra hitch the free leg. Obviously it is a one leg exercise. And immediately the notion of gluteus medius activation arises. But to get that much lift on free side would suggest “other muscles” are contributing. Intuitively that looks something like quadratus lumborum doing the hitching? Before I move forward. All good exercises. Tough. Lots of stuff going on. The question I will ask is how specific to running is a hip lock as shown? And is there a more efficient, evidence based way to enhance running? In this case, maintain pelvic integrity.
I would like to ask an expert in functional anatomy or biomechanics or kinesiology if gluteus medius can actually hitch a hip like in the photos below.
Below are a few links to Nathan Kiely excellent resources and what he calls hip locks. At times I thought looking at some of his “hip lock” exercises, they were just exercises like stepups done with good form. Other times he demonstrated what for purpose of this article will be defined as a hip lock.
Time and time again we see images of athletes at maximum speed doing what is deemed a hip lock to justify the exercise (even though 99% of these athletes never did a hip lock as defined by me). The guy on right (red) though better hurry up and hitch that hip! High knees is often seen as a product of bouncing off the track added to hip flexion. This position is a millisecond point in time and there are lots of things happening simultaneously at early stance phase of running.
The difficulty in writing this blog article is defining a hip lock exercise. If you go back to the video you will find some dynamic switching drills and bounding drills with constraints. I am sure the Bosch process is to go from static concentric hip lock exercises and progress to dynamic exercises with stretch shortening eccentric movements. But in my opinion, one would not take some of contrived hip lock positions in wall drills for example onto a field into contrived bounding exercises with constraints for example. Well that’s my opinion!
Ok. So let’s cut to the chase. What happens in running? What is the role of gluteus medius?
I wrote an E Book on hamstring rehabilitation in 2007. The pictures of the 2 runners are David Wojcinski and Joel Corey from the Geelong Football Club AFL. These are in their first year AFL. I screened them at 90+ speed. Joel Corey is the classic glute medius issue. His general eccentric strength ie: quads etc was ok. But he did have lots of “core” issues. And some injuries. The strategy for a year or two was to work on “Pilates”, single stability work and integrate with running drills and low level plyometrics. This was along with classical weights. By his third year he was stable and obviously a player who could sprint and endure all the game. Check his record! He was a star. So by then (late 1990’s) there was already a lot of evidence on what exercises to prescribe to attack this issue. And how to progress to 100% acceleration and velocity. And fatigue! So the progression could be from hitch lifts to plyometrics to running drills to speed. Check the little table. Obviously given contact times in high speed running/maximum speed are reduced. Thus the ability to stabilise the hips needs to be trained at progressively faster speeds and forces. But there should be no compromise for poor technique through the progressions.
So let’s first look at some evidence about what can lead to pelvic issues related to gluteus medius and minimus in particular and then how it relates to running.
The Prehab Guys website is an excellent resource. And in this article they show lots of exercises to strengthen Gluteus Medius and hips when related to the Trendelenburg Gait. They nicely describe the history of this test.
“Quick History Lesson: In 1895 Freidrich Trendelenburg described the Trendelenburg sign as weakness of hip abductor muscles in reference to congenital dislocations of the hip and progressive muscular atrophy. Fast forward to today: most orthopedic and physiotherapy textbooks describe this sign as a test of hip function.”
And we can find a lot of evidence on the Trendelenburg Test and implications. Below is a nice you tube on pelvic drop, Trendelenburg test and exercises.
There are lots of papers grading gluteus medius activation. Suffice to say that being on one leg always kicks activation up. And single leg squat is usually graded very high. And in my opinion this probably reflects a bit closer to what is happening in running. Rather than what the classic hip lock exercise looks like. The gluteus medius can abduct the hip to level but unlikely it can take hip into extreme positions as we see in the hip lock exercise. Well after reading all the anatomy books, that’s my opinion!
Below is the link to this paper classifying exercises. There are many other papers doing the same thing. Below is an example of % muscle activation. And below is a you tube describing the function of GMed.
https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2009.2796
The question is can the gluteus medius further contract the pelvis to tilt the whole other side as in a hip lock exercise? Or are other muscles in the trunk simply lifting the hip?
There is a huge evidence base in this area from Trendelenburg test to how the gluteus medius functions when running. One nice paper (Running related gluteus medius function in health and injury: A systematic review with meta-analysis) puts things into perspective a little. Obviously the whole reason for the hip lock exercise is to ultimately transfer to running at all speeds. When you read some of the grabs from this study the whole notion of motor control starts to become important. The muscle has to fire in situations that have very short contact times and huge eccentric forces. Thus like all exercises that need to transfer to the field there has to be progrsssions. Obviously in the initial video showcasing Bosch tour, one can see the progressions to fancy bounding and drills often with constraints.
Running related gluteus medius function in health and injury: A systematic review with meta-analysis
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-electromyography-and-kinesiology
“The results support the notion that the function of GMed in running is primarily to assist with absorbing the ground reaction force in the loading phase (Hamner et al., 2010; Lenhart et al., 2014)”
“to support coronal plane pelvic alignment during the early stance phase of running”
“mechanism of the hip in healthy or injured athletes. For example, increasing running speed, particularly > 7m/s requires larger hip muscle amplitude (Bartlett et al., 2014; Chumanov”
So whether the hip lock is a contrived exercise utilising trunk muscles to pull the hip up does not make it a bad exercise. Anything an athlete does on one leg will fire gluteus medius. It is good work. But is it the most effective progression?
As far back as the 1970s I used the Gerard Mach drills then in the early 90’s bought all of Loren Seagrave’s cassettes which helped me a lot. Below is a You Tube advertising the Speed Dynamics Course. Looks like lots of level hips to me when watching the athletes in the video. Running drills are obviously low intensity eccentric exercises that mimic the running action. When progressing from some single leg squats and wall drills (in the context of “gluteus medius” development), run drills provide both technical and conditioning opportunities to move forward. Low level plyometrics (and high intensity plyometrics also) are valuable tools to continue the progressions at higher intensities. Remember the notion of motor control I mentioned before as we progress to maximal accelerations and speed. Obviously businesses like Altis now put out really good information on technique, run drills etc. I buy stuff like that still to update.
When I searched for research on hip locks the only one I could find other than Franz Bosch books and internet articles was a paper on diving in football. Correct me if I am wrong. Link is below.
https://commons.nmu.edu/isbs/vol40/iss1/71/
So a question I raise to those more qualified in functional anatomy than me. Can the gluteal muscles really tilt the pelvis this much as in picture below? Or are trunk muscles lifting the pelvis as in pictures of hip locks early in this blog article? I fail to see this amount of range possible with GMed. And also the other question is about the shots we see of sprinters in supposed hip locks. Are these just products of large forces from the track added to hip flexion. Just suggesting. Don’t send me hate mail please. We know that high knees is as much a product of rebound as it is of hip flexion.
Summary. Nothing wrong with hip lock exercises. As I said. Any one leg exercise is good. But are they contrived? And is there a more logical evidence based progression? From gymnasium exercises to running drills and plyometrics then to running and sports? I think so. That’s my opinion. The hip lock concept ( like the hamstring tantrums) seems to cover too many bases. But fits nicely into a product to sell. And gluteus medius (and minimus) is a well researched occurrence in stabilising the hip in running. Is “hip lock” sort of (but not quite) the same thing but packaged nicely with a nice ribbon?
After adequate strength is achieved in prone positions or using dynamometers or other tools with respect to Abduction/GMed it is time to MOVE ON. In my experience a more specific progression to target what a hip lock aims at, is to start with variations of single leg squats. Free standing varied range single leg squats, single squats to bench again progressed with depth, skater squats etc. The research validates this. Added to high activation of GMed is the eccentric phase of a single leg squat which is not part of hip lock gym based exercises. Isometrics is good stuff. But no proof better than combined concentric/eccentric exercises. Then ideally move to very low level single leg jumps and hops and progress or regress as needed. Some form of testing single leg is useful here. Because if GMed is strong in prone tests, collapsing at early stance in high intensity could be due to other factors. Here we start combining motor control, eccentric qualities and GMed firing. Add run drills from dribbles to a skips to variations of ‘high knees”. All types of drills. Again we can see the athlete in action and adjust techniques with drills. But also condition the athlete like plyometrics. Then obviously assess the athlete running and sprinting.
I leave you with this. Jonathan Edwards jumping 18.29. Crazy forces in each phase. Huge eccentric forces coupled with of course the ability to stabilise the hips. It all happens very quickly. Combination of motor control, power and stability (could find more words). I don’t want to use the word hip lock in this situation. Makes no sense to me.
loris bertolacci 
Hi Loris, first nice post, and one question. Could you pass me your email? I would like to be able to send you an anatomical approximation of the Hip lock that I make based on the work of Neumann.
Lorisbertolacci@gmail.com