Most people are not aware of the importance that the hip and hip muscles have for our body. You may not realize it, but you need your hips in order to perform mundane tasks like standing, running, stepping sideways, bending over or even walking. This is why it’s important to maintain your hip health. And in order to strengthen your hip bones and muscles, you need to know hip exerciseswhich you can exercise frequently in order to achieve this goal.

Hip Exercises for Men

1.      Cable Single-Leg Side Raise

If you are someone who isn’t too confident about his posture while working out with dumbbells or body weight, then this is a good hip exercise for you. Cable machines provide your body with resistance, which is essential to improve your muscle strength.

• Attach the cable to your right ankle and begin with a light weight (20 pounds) to assess how much your body can really handle.
• Now stand in a manner that the left side of your body is facing the machine, meaning your right side is facing away from the machine. Keep your back straight and legs shoulder width apart.
• Lift your right ankle sideways as high as you can, bring it down, and repeat the process.
• Do 3 sets, 10 reps (for each leg).
• You can always spice things up and do a front raise. Simply face the machine and then raise your right ankle to your chest level, bring it down, and repeat the process.

2.      Lying Leg Raise

• Pull out your mat, and lie on your side. Tie an ankle weight to your ankle (or do the exercise without one). Make sure your body is in a straight line.
• Then slowly raise your leg sideways and raise it as high as you can.
• Slowly bring it down, but stop a few inches away from your other leg. Then, immediately raise your leg sideways again.
• Do 3 sets, 15 reps (for each leg).

A variation you can try is…

• Lie on your left side in a straight line. Take your left knee and bend it so that your left foot is at a 90 degree angle to your left leg. Then raise your right leg up and down. Do 3 sets, 15 reps (for each leg)

3.      Side Lunges

This exercise is great for your medius, maximum and minimum hip joint muscles.

• Stand with your feet shoulder width apart, take light weight dumbbells in both your hands, and squat.
• Then push your right leg to the side, bring it in, stand up straight and repeat on the other leg.
• Start with no dumbbells if you aren’t confident of your posture, or use bars with weights on them if you know what you’re doing.
• Do 3 sets, 8 reps (for each leg).

4.     Hanging Leg Raise

Now this isn’t for everybody, so if you’re not able to do such hip exercises,don’t worry. Move on to the next one. Called the holy grail of core training, you work your core, knees hips and legs at the same time. In order to increase the difficulty levels, you can add ankle weights or even attach a cable to your ankles when you raise your legs in order to make them parallel to the ground.

Do 3 sets, 5 reps.

5.     Squats

Squats are an excellent all round hip exercises for menas they not only strengthen your hip muscles and bones, but also work out your core, improve the range of motion in your ankles and hips, stabilize muscles and improve your overall balance.

There are many different types of squats out there and if you’re a beginner, I would suggest doing the most basic one first without any weights. Get your body posture correct and then you can move on to weights as well as more difficult squats.

Do 4 sets, 10 reps.

6.      Step-Ups

Step ups are massively underrated hip exercises for men,mostly because it’s thought to be for women. First off that’s terribly ignorant and sexist. Exercises are exercises and they aren’t created based for a specific gender. Second, these exercises challenge your lower body muscles (hip flexors, glutes, hamstrings and quads) in a manner like no other hip exercise. Not only is it a great exercise for beginners, but for professional athletes as well, as it improves your lower body strength, stability and balance quite well. You can either try different step up exercises as mentioned in the video, or stick to 2-3 exercises you are most comfortable with and keep on adding weights to them as and when you feel you can perform said exercises easily.

Do 3 sets, 25 reps (each leg).

7.      Side Leg Lifts

This one’s fairly simple and the video explains it thoroughly. This exercise is again great for your hips as it not only improves the strength and resistance of the muscles, but it also increases their size, making your hips appear larger/stronger/well-built. It also works on the back and abdominal muscles.

Do 4 sets, 15 reps (each leg).

Stretching Is Important

A lot of people, especially men, forgot the importance of a good stretch after their workout. It doesn’t matter whether your goal is relaxing your muscles, improved flexibility or simply a better range of motion – stretching provides it all to you. It also works on your muscle aches, especially if you’ve been working hard on strength training. If you still aren’t convinced, here are a few more reasons why you should stretch your body after performing hip exercises for men:

• Improves circulation of blood in your lower body
• Increase ‘body awareness’
• Prevent muscle strains: a strong pre-stretched muscle resists stress better than a strong un-stretched muscle
• Reduces soreness
• Improves your energy levels: stretching often gives you a boost of energy that is much required after a tiring workout session
• Prevents post workout joint/muscle strain
• Improves your body posture
• Improves your body balance
• Increase your stamina