Your hip flexors are a group of muscles that lift your knees and help you bend at the waist. You use them every time you walk, run, climb stairs, kick a ball, or sit up from lying down.
They are essential for athletic performance, basic movement, and keeping your pelvis and spine happy. But ignore them, and they’ll tighten up and cause trouble.
In this article, we’ll break down the hip flexors in a way that won’t make you feel like you accidentally signed up for med school: from anatomy and function to the best exercises, a complete workout, and some great stretches.
Table of Contents
Hip Flexor Anatomy and Function
Your hip flexors are not just one single muscle. They’re a team of individual muscles, each with a specific job to do.
- Iliopsoas (pronounced illy-oh-SO-as): This is the power couple of the hip flexors. It is actually two muscles, the iliacus and the psoas major, that join forces.
- The psoas major is a long, thick muscle that connects your lower spine to your thigh bone. It is the only muscle that directly connects your spine to your legs.
- The iliacus is a flat, triangular muscle that lines the inside of your pelvis (the ilium). It also attaches to your thigh bone.
- Together, they make the iliopsoas your strongest hip flexor.
- Rectus Femoris: You might know the rectus femoris as part of your quadriceps (the big group of four muscles on the front of your thigh). While its main job is extending your knee, it also helps flex your hip because it’s the only quad muscle that crosses the hip joint.
- Sartorius: The sartorius is the longest muscle in your body, running like a ribbon from the outside of your hip all the way down and across to the inside of your knee. It’s a jack-of-all-trades, doing hip flexion as well as some rotation and abduction (moving your leg out to the side).
- Pectineus: The pectineus is a small and flat muscle in your upper inner thigh, in the groin area. It assists with hip flexion, but it also helps you adduct your thigh (it moves it back towards the center).
- Tensor Fasciae Latae (TFL): The TFL is a pocket-sized muscle on the front and outer part of your hip, right where you’d put your hands on your hips. It works with the other hip flexors to lift your leg forward, and helps you move your leg out to the side (abduction) and rotate it inward.
- Adductors: Your adductor group is made up of several muscles, and their exact function can change a bit depending on the position of your hip, but some help with hip flexion. The adductor longus and adductor brevis attach to your pelvis and thigh bone and are in a good position to help pull your thigh forward and up, and the adductor magnus (the anterior fibers, the ones closer to the front of your body) works alongside them (the posterior part helps with the opposite motion, hip extension).
- Gracilis: A long and thin muscle that runs from your pubic bone down the inside of your thigh, crosses the knee, and attaches to your shinbone. It helps pull your thigh forward, joining the team of other hip flexors. And because it crosses the knee joint, it also helps you bend your knee.
What Do They Do?
As we’ve established, the number one job of your hip flexors is hip flexion. In other words, that means they decrease the angle between your thigh and your torso.
Your hip flexors work every time you walk, climb stairs, sprint, or lift your knee to tie your shoe.
- If they’re strong and flexible, you move smoothly, sprint faster, and squat deeper without your back complaining.
- If they’re tight and weak, they tug on your spine, mess with your posture, and make you feel like an old door hinge.
In the gym, they can be a prime mover (or one of them), like when you do mountain climbers, hanging leg raises, or banded hip marches.
They can also assist your other lifts, like when you squat (they stabilize your pelvis and help you control the bottom of the movement) or deadlift (mostly glutes and hamstrings, but your hip flexors stabilize your hips and spine).
Read The 20 Best Hip Exercises for Muscle Growth, Athletic Performance, and Strength for more in-depth info.
Inactivity, a lot of sitting, is one of the big culprits behind weak and stiff hip flexors.1
The Best Exercises for Building Your Hip Flexors
In this section, we’ll take a look at six of the best hip flexor exercises that complement each other, from dynamic ones that build hip flexor strength through movement to ones that improve hip flexor endurance and static strength.
By putting them all together, as we’ll do in the next section, you can create a great hip flexor workout.
1. Leg Raise (Lying & Hanging)
Both lying and hanging leg raises are excellent ab exercises, but they also train your hip flexors hard.
Your hip flexors will be in on the action if you do your leg raises the regular way (all the way up and all the way down), but if you really want to maximize their involvement and minimize how much work your abs do, keep the following cues in mind:
- In the lying leg raise, you want to think “hinge at the hip, lock the ribcage”: brace your core so your low back stays against the floor and lift your thighs by pulling from the front of the hips rather than “crunching” the spine. You want to stop around 70–90° of hip flexion; beyond that you’ll mostly be tucking your pelvis and shifting work to the abs. Keep your knees as straight as you can for more load and avoid letting momentum or your pelvis tip forward as you lower your legs.
- When doing hanging leg raises, lift your thighs until they’re about parallel to the floor (an L-position). If your goal is hip flexors, you don’t need to curl your tailbone under at the top; keep the trunk quiet and let the hip flexors do the lifting.
2. Mountain Climbers
Often used as a core exercise for the abs and obliques, mountain climbers are also a great hip flexor exercise. They bring your knee to your chest while your abs stop your pelvis from tipping forward.
The faster you go, the more of a conditioning workout your hip flexors get. If you slow it down and focus on knee drive, you can turn it into more of a strength and control movement for them.
To make mountain climbers even more hip-flexor-focused, consider varying them by wearing sliders or socks and gliding with your feet instead of lifting them. You keep constant tension through the pull and force your hip flexors to work the whole rep (concentric pulling in, eccentric controlling the glide back) with less momentum to help.
You can also make them more challenging by putting a light mini-band around your feet to add resistance to the knee-in phase, and elevating your hands a little (on a bench) lets you pull farther without rounding your back.
Mountain climbers fit almost anywhere: as a warm-up, do 2–3 controlled sets of 8–12 knee drives per side; for strength-endurance, do sets of 20–30 seconds with a 1-second pause on each drive; for conditioning, do quicker intervals of 20–40 seconds.
3. Banded Hip March
The banded hip march is a great way to load pure hip flexion while teaching your trunk and pelvis to stay quiet. It’s a neat primer for runners and field athletes, or as an accessory exercise after squats and deadlifts to balance the hip extension work.
Are you a runner? Check out Strength Training for Runners to get started with an effective program (free in StrengthLog).
You should feel it deep at the front of your hip, not in your lower back. If your back takes over, you’re leaning or arching, so bring your pelvis under you and think, “Keep your belt buckle pointing forward.”
Keep the foot of the leg you’re lifting in a dorsiflexed position, meaning you pull your toes up towards your shin. It makes it easier to keep the band in place and activates the muscles more. Also, don’t twist, hike your hip, or let your foot spin out. The hip march is a simple exercise, but small things like that can make it less effective.
4. Standing Hip Flexor Raise
The standing hip flexor raise directly trains hip flexion without turning it into a whole-body exercise. It’s great for runners and track-and-field athletes (like sprinters) because it makes the “knee-up” phase of their gait stronger and improves high-knee mechanics in general.
Learn more and lift your way to faster sprint times with Strength Training for Sprinting: Guide & Training Program.
If you haven’t done them before, you want to start lighter than you think (this exercise gets hard fast) and do sets with a one- to two-second hold hold at the top. Progress by increasing the load in small jumps or raising your knee a few degrees higher without losing form. If your front hip feels cranky, begin with no added weight to groove the pattern before loading it up.
The resistance can come from many different tools: a dumbbell held at the knee, an ankle weight, a cable machine attached to the ankle, a resistance band, or a kettlebell, like in the video demo above. Regardless of equipment, no leaning back, no hiking the opposite hip, and no swinging the leg.
5. L-Sit Hold
The L-sit is an excellent test of core and hip flexor strength. You hold your body up with your arms and keep your legs straight out in front of you, parallel to the floor, like a human L. It’s simple to describe, but not so simple to do. It has a high entry barrier compared to most other hip flexor exercises in this list.
Use progressions that keep the lever challenging but controlled if you’re going specifically for hip flexor activation: start with a tucked sit, then one-leg-out, then both legs straight.
If you’re new to L-sits, you probably won’t be able to hold them very long. But brief holds (5–15 seconds) accumulated for the total time you’re going for are effective, and before long, you’ll be able to string them together into longer and longer holds.
Doing your L-holds on blocks or parallettes spares your wrists and makes it easier to maintain clearance without “cheating”.
6. Reverse Nordic
The reverse Nordic is an eccentric-focused exercise for your quads and hips, especially the rectus femoris, the only quad muscle that also acts as a hip flexor.
Reverse Nordics don’t isolate your hip flexors. Instead, they stretch them, improve their flexibility, and load them in a way that the other exercises in this list don’t, building tolerance and strength at long muscle lengths rather than directly training the iliopsoas to lift your thigh. So you want to treat it as an accessory to your direct hip-flexion exercises (like banded marches).
For example, one study with 26 participants found that training it for eight weeks increased fascicle length, muscle thickness, pennation angle, and cross-sectional area of the rectus femoris muscle.2 If you don’t know what all those words mean, don’t worry: it’s all good stuff.
Go only as far as you can without arching your lower back or letting the hips bend; breaking at the hips or flaring your ribs shifts the load off the hip flexors and onto your back.
Hip Flexor Workout for Muscle and Strength
So what does an effective hip flexor workout look like?
First, if you’re a physically active person with a good variety in your training and you aren’t experiencing any specific issues, your standard lower-body workouts might be enough, and you might not need to train your hip flexors specifically at all.
In that case, a good leg day workout could very well give you all you need.
Try the best Leg Day Workout free in StrengthLog.
But if you spend a lot of your day sitting, need explosive power for sports, or feel that your glutes aren’t firing correctly during workouts, you will benefit from giving your hip flexors direct attention.
So, if you want to focus on your hip flexors specifically, give our Hip Flexor Workout a go:
| Exercise | Sets | Reps |
| Hanging Leg Raise | 3 | 8–10 |
| Standing Hip Flexor Raise | 3 | 10 |
| Mountain Climbers | 3 | 30 |
That’s pure hip flexor action.
Start the Hip Flexor Workout free in StrengthLog.
You start with leg raises as your primary strength-building movement, leveraging your entire lower-body weight for resistance. If you can’t complete the reps with good form without swinging, do lying leg raises instead. Conversely, if you can do more than 10 reps with perfect form (take 2–3 seconds to lower your legs back down), add small ankle weights.
Then, you move to an isolation exercise for direct, progressive overload on the hip flexors: the standing hip flexor raise. Use a resistance band, cable pulley, or kettlebell to load them.
Lastly, you finish up with dynamic mountain climbers to force your hip flexors to work continuously at high speed, training endurance and metabolic capacity.
To follow these workouts, download our workout log app and start tracking your workouts today.
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The Best Stretches for Tight Hip Flexors
I don’t know how many times I have seen people with tight or achy hip flexors say something along the lines of, “I stretch and stretch, but my hip flexors just tighten up again.”
When I put them on strength work for the hip flexors for a few weeks, they can suddenly use them again, as the body lets go of the protective/compensatory response that produces the feeling of tightness.
A muscle that feels “tight” is often weak and gripping to create stability (common in people who sit all day), and the solution is often not the one that feels the most intuitive, to stretch it, but to strengthen it with direct weight training. Excessive stretching without strength work might even reinforce the problem.
For most people, strength training in full range often improves mobility as much as, or more than, passive stretching.3 I’d go as far as to say that most people don’t need specific stretching as long as they do dynamic full-range-of-motion exercises for the entire body.
Learn more in our in-depth What Does Stretching Do? Benefits Backed by Science article
That being said, there is nothing wrong with stretching your hip flexors as a complement to full-range strength work. But it shouldn’t be your only flexibility work. On the contrary, if you only have time for one, you always want to choose strength training through range.
If you need to stretch before a workout to get into the range of motion you’re aiming for, feel free to do so. I usually discourage static stretching pre-workout because it impairs performance and strength for a few hours.4 However, this does not seem to be the case with the hip flexors.5 So, if you need it for acute mobility, stretch away.
If your hip flexors feel stiff/tight or you sit a lot, feel free to sprinkle in some stretching alongside your weight training. You can’t go wrong with these three options:
1. Kneeling Lunge
The kneeling lunge is a great one to counteract tight hip flexors from a lot of sitting. It is one of the most common and effective stretches for the hip flexors, especially the iliopsoas and rectus femoris.
Bring one leg forward and one leg back with the front foot facing forward and the back leg with the top of the foot facing down. Keep both hips facing forward and lean forward to get a good stretch in the back leg’s hip flexors.
If you feel it in the front thigh, that’s the rectus femoris being stretched too, which is normal.
If your goal is mobility rather than just flexibility, you can turn the static kneeling lunge into an active stretch: contract your glute on the kneeling side for a few seconds, then relax and move deeper into the stretch.
2. Pigeon Pose
The pigeon pose is an effective hip stretch, although it’s not a direct hip flexor stretch.
When you get into the pigeon pose, you stretch different muscle groups in each leg. Your front leg primarily stretches the outer hip and glutes, the sensation you’ll likely feel most intensely. At the same time, your back leg is where the hip flexor stretch happens (especially in the psoas and rectus femoris).
To really feel the hip flexor stretch in the pigeon pose, keep your torso upright and your chest lifted instead of folding forward.
If your hips are very tight, the pigeon can strain your knees, so a gentler alternative for you would be a kneeling lunge to isolate your hip flexors more directly.
3. Lizard Pose
The lizard pose is a great hip flexor stretch with an added groin/inner thigh component. From a low lunge, bring both hands (or forearms if you have the mobility) to the inside of your front foot. Keep your back leg extended and hips sinking down.
You stretch your back leg’s hip flexors (especially the psoas and rectus femoris), and, at the same time, your forward leg works the hip in deep flexion and external rotation, which opens the front hip socket and groin.
If you want to isolate the stretch more to the hip flexors of the back leg, keep your chest more upright. It’s also less complex and easier to hold for longer.
Want to get started with mobility training? Try StrengthLog free for more than 50 of the best mobility exercises and both static and dynamic stretches, including the three great hip flexor stretches above.
Frequently Asked Questions About How to Train Your Hip Flexors
Yes, because they help with walking, running, and core stability. Strong hip flexors improve posture, reduce injury risk, and boost performance.
• Weak hip flexors make it hard to lift your knees or keep good posture.
• Tight hip flexors cause hip discomfort, lower back arching, or limited mobility.
A simple test is to lie on your back and pull one knee to your chest; if the other leg lifts off the ground, your hip flexors may be tight.
Effective strengthening exercises include:
• Leg Raises
• Mountain Climbers
• Banded Hip March
• Standing Hip Flexor Raise
• L-Sit Hold
• Reverse Nordic
The iliopsoas is your prime mover for pure hip flexion, especially above ~45° of flexion.
For most people, twice per week is enough, and that includes both any indirect workouts (like a leg day workout that includes hip training) and any direct hip flexion work.
It depends. Tight hip flexors often come from weakness, but sitting too much also shortens them. Strength training plus stretching often works best. If you only have time for one, pick strength training in a full range of motion.
Final Rep
And that’s it! By now, you have a good grasp of your hip flexor anatomy, some of the best exercises for these guys, and how you can combine them into one awesome hip flexor workout.
Remember to download our workout log app to train this workout (and many more) and track your gains. Increase the weight you use in each exercise to make sure you enjoy continued muscle growth and strength gains.
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Last reviewed: 2021-11-16
References
- Musculoskelet Sci Pract. 2021 Feb:51:102282. Prolonged sitting and physical inactivity are associated with limited hip extension: A cross-sectional study.
- J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2019 Apr;59(4):640-647. Changes in rectus femoris architecture induced by the reverse nordic hamstring exercises.
- Sports Med. 2023 Jan 9;53(3):707–722. Resistance Training Induces Improvements in Range of Motion: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
- J Sport Health Sci. 2024 May 10;13(6):805–819. Revisiting the stretch-induced force deficit: A systematic review with multilevel meta-analysis of acute effects.
- Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Feb 17;18(4):1936. The Influence of Stretching the Hip Flexor Muscles on Performance Parameters. A Systematic Review with Meta-Analysis.
