Hip Hinge

The hip hinge is a movement pattern, not a specific exercise. The defining characteristic: the movement is initiated by pushing the hips back, with the spine staying neutral and the knees staying relatively extended. Contrast with a squat, where the knees break first and the hips descend vertically — in a hinge, the hips travel backward more than downward.

The wall drill is the most reliable teaching tool for learning the hinge. Stand one foot away from the wall, feet hip-width. Push your hips back to touch the wall with your glutes. Do not bend the knees or round the lower back. Feel the hamstrings load. That is a hinge. Once you can repeat that cleanly, move 18 inches from the wall and repeat.

The dowel rod or PVC pipe drill adds a spine-neutral check. Hold a dowel along your spine: it should contact the back of the head, upper back, and sacrum at all times during the hinge. If any of those three contact points breaks, the hinge broke.

Most beginner mistakes in deadlifting and RDL tracing back to a poor hinge pattern. The fix is almost always removing load and returning to bodyweight hip hinge drills until the pattern is automatic. Adding load to a broken movement pattern reinforces the broken pattern — it does not correct it.

• Push the hips back — reach for the wall behind you
• Soft knees — not locked, not bent like a squat
• Hamstrings load as the hips travel back
• Spine stays neutral from head to tailbone
• Weight stays on mid-foot, not the toes
• Stand up by driving the hips forward and squeezing the glutes

• Squatting instead of hinging — knees bend too much, hips do not travel back
• Lower back rounding — cue chest up, hamstrings should feel the load before the spine does
• Hyperextending at the top — a slight arch is fine but exaggerated extension is not hip extension
• Looking up aggressively — a neutral neck (chin slightly tucked) protects the cervical spine
• Feet turning out excessively — some external rotation is fine; duck feet indicates hip flexor tightness more often than a hinge problem

• deadlift→
• romanian deadlift→
• squat→