The 9 Best Hip Stretches for Women, According to Experts

It’s not uncommon for our hips to need a little extra TLC. Especially among those of us who spend a good chunk of our days seated (um, hi!), this joint can become chronically tight, according to physical therapist Lauren Glisic, DPT, CSCS, of Athletic Lab Physical Therapy and Performance Training in Santa Monica, California. 

What’s more, women are more likely to do workouts that focus on the lower body—think Pilates and barre—and if we don’t do any mobility work afterwards, the muscles surrounding the hips can turn on us. “I know when I have a heavy leg day, if I forget to foam roll or stretch after, I definitely feel that tightness in the hip the next day,” Dr. Glisic says. Fortunately, practicing some of the best hip stretches for women can help you untangle all that tension. 

To be sure, hip-opening exercises and yoga poses aren’t the only answer to tight hips. This area often gets stiff as a protective mechanism when the muscles are actually weak, says Meredith Witte, MSEP, CSCS, a functional strength coach and yoga instructor with a master’s in exercise physiology. “Your nervous system feels worried that you're going to injure yourself, so it either prohibits you from going into that range of motion or just makes you feel uncomfortable with a sensation of tightness,” she explains. In this case, you’ll want to focus on strengthening the ball and socket hip joint.  

Yet making sure you’re also mobilizing the hips through their full range of motion can build a well-balanced, functional joint that will help you move about your day with fewer aches and pains. Here’s what experts want you to keep in mind whenever your hips are craving a good stretch.   

The benefits of stretching the hips

There are a few good reasons to regularly add some of the best hip stretches for women to your workout cooldown or bedtime routine—or, really, whenever you feel like you need a little release.  

You’ll open up a bigger range of motion—and more effective workouts

Stretching the hips isn’t just about being able to impress your friends by dropping into the splits. Creating more mobility in this joint will allow you to increase your range of motion in all kinds of exercises so that you can get more out of your workouts. For instance, “when you're limited in hip internal and external rotation, it limits how deeply you can squat,” Dr. Glisic says. “You're hitting more of those muscle fibers if you can get to the end range of the squat or the lunge. ”

More mobile hips decreases your risk of injury

Tight hips are more than just annoying—they could potentially lead to injury. “There's a huge association between a lack of hip mobility and disc issues in the back,” Dr. Glisic says. There’s also some evidence that inflexible hips can predispose us to knee injuries, she adds. 

More open hips just feel better

A lot of motion happens at this joint—the ball and socket setup allows our thigh bones to move forwards, backwards, side to side, and rotate inward and outward. “The hips are designed to move, so they thrive through movement,” Witte says. “If we don't have a lot of hip mobility, then our [muscles] kind of lock up a little bit (including our pelvic floor muscles).”

We all feel this: Think about anytime you’ve been sitting still for hours, and how creaky your hips are when you finally get up. But if you do a couple of hip hinges or squats, that can “immediately make you feel a little bit better,” Witte says. 

It doesn’t take much time to make a difference

To build muscular strength in the hip joint, you need to be diligent about workouts for at least eight to 12 weeks. But you can improve flexibility a heck of a lot faster. “If you're holding a stretch for at least a minute or two, and you're doing that at least once a day, you should see long-lasting change in about two weeks,” Dr. Glisic says. That said, Witte caveats that since all our bodies are different, it can sometimes take longer, so don’t give up if you don’t see results in that timeline.  

The best hip stretches for women

For healthy hips, Witte suggests mobilizing the joint in every direction possible: flex the thigh in toward your torso, extend it back behind you, abduct it out to the side, adduct it in toward your midline, and rotate it both out and in. These nine moves offer a bunch of different ways to check off all of those boxes.   

1. Figure 4 pose

This classic stretch is a gentler version of yoga’s pigeon pose. Both variations put the front leg into external rotation to open up the outer hip. 

1. 1.
   Lie with your back on the floor, knees bent and feet flat on the ground.
2. 2.
   Cross one ankle over the other thigh, placing it just above the knee. 
3. 3.
   Lift your bottom leg, using both hands to grab either the back of that thigh or the shin.
4. 4.
   Pull that leg toward your torso as you gently press the opposite knee away from you.
5. 5.
   Hold for one to two minutes, then switch sides. 

2. Hip 90/90 stretch

This position—recommended by both Witte and Dr. Glisic—offers a two-for-one stretch. “You can stretch hip external rotators on the front leg and hip internal rotators on the back leg,” Dr. Glisic says. “A lot of people forget to stretch their internal rotation, which is where a lot of us are tight and stiff.”

1. 1.
   Sit on the floor with one leg bent in front of you, knee at a 90-degree angle, while the other leg is bent behind you also with knee at 90-degree angle, shins resting on floor. 
2. 2.
   Alternate between leaning into the front leg, then shifting your weight into the back leg while trying to get your glute to hit the ground. “You should feel a deep stretch in your glutes of the front leg, and a stretch in the front of the hip on the back leg,” Dr. Glisic says. 
3. 3.
   Continue for one to two minutes, then switch sides.  

3. Windshield wipers

This move is another way that Witte likes to work both internal and external rotation at the same time. 

1. 1.
   Lie down on your back, and bend your knees with feet flat on the ground. Alternatively, you can sit on your glutes with knees bent and feet flat, if that’s more comfortable. 
2. 2.
   Let the legs slowly fall to your left side.
3. 3.
   Lift them back up to center, then let them fall toward your right side. 
4. 4.
   Continue alternating sides for one to two minutes. 

4. Couch stretch

This is the pose you need when you really want to open up the front of the hip. “You're getting a really deep quad [and] hip flexor stretch,” Dr. Glisic says. 

1. 1.
   Kneel on the floor right in front of a couch or wall, facing away from it.
2. 2.
   Place one foot on the ground in front of you for balance, and put the other knee right next to the couch or wall, with the foot pointing up and resting against it.   
3. 3.
   You’ll feel a deep stretch through the front of the thigh and hip flexor of the leg on the couch. “Key here is tilting the pelvis, squeezing the glute of the leg being stretched to avoid dumping into your lower back,” Dr. Glisic says.   
4. 4.
   Hold for one to two minutes, then switch sides. 

5. Half-kneeling stretch

If the couch stretch is too much for your body, Witte recommends this more accessible move. “I love a half-kneeling stretch,” she says. Just be sure to keep the focus on the hip flexors. “Oftentimes, people arch their back and try to go really deep into it,” she says. “But when we do that, we are not actually targeting a stretch in those muscles across the front of the hip in the way we want.”

1. 1.
   Kneel on the ground, and place one foot in front of you while the back knee and shin stays on the floor. 
2. 2.
   Keep your shoulders right over your hips as you shift slightly forward. “Think of tucking your tailbone a little bit so that you keep your pelvis in neutral,” Witte says.  
3. 3.
   Hold for one to two minutes, then switch sides. 

6. Hip airplanes

This move actively rotates the hips around the thigh. “You're really opening up through the hip joint in different ranges of motion,” Witte says. 

1. 1.
   Stand with feet hips-width apart, and put all your weight into one leg while the other gently lifts up off the ground. 
2. 2.
   Hinge forward at the hips until your torso and back leg are parallel to the floor (similar to a single-leg deadlift).
3. 3.
   Slowly open up the hips to the side, so that the hip with the leg in the air moves on top of the other. Then bring it back down so that hip bone reaches toward the opposite thigh. “I like to think of headlights on the front of my pelvis, so the headlights turn away from the standing leg and then they turn towards the standing leg,” Witte says.  
4. 4.
   Repeat for one to two minutes, then switch sides. 

7. Banded inferior hip mobilization

For many of her clients, Dr. Glisic says their hip stiffness is less about needing to stretch the muscles than it is about opening up the joint itself. “There's a joint capsule that's like Saran wrap wrapped around the joint,” she explains. “If the joint capsule is really tight, you can stretch the muscles all you want, and you may not see improvement in mobility because it may not be the muscles that were tight, but the joint structure itself.” In this case, she says using some traction can be a gamechanger. 

1. 1.
   Anchor a heavy resistance band to something stable like a squat rack. Then lie on your back with your feet pointed to that anchor.
2. 2.
   Bend one knee in toward your chest and wrap the band around the top of that thigh (as close to your groin as you can get it). 
3. 3.
   Then, slide back away from the anchor point so that the band is pulling your thigh bone away from your torso.
4. 4.
   Hold for two minutes, then switch sides.

8. Banded anterior hip mobilization

This traction exercise will help open up the joint in a different direction from the above mobilization. “It's pulling the ball forward in the socket, stretching the anterior capsule,” Dr. Glisic says.  

1. 1.
   Anchor a heavy resistance band to something stable like a squat rack. Then get into a tall half-kneeling position.
2. 2.
   Wrap the band around the bottom thigh, right under the glutes. 
3. 3.
   Slide back away from the anchor point so the band is pulling your thigh bone forward.   
4. 4.
   Keep your torso tall and squeeze the glutes of the hip being mobilized so that you tilt the pelvis under. “You should feel a deep stretch in the front of the hip,” Dr. Glisic says. 
5. 5.
   Hold for two minutes, then switch sides. 

9. Hip circles

If you do it right, this classic mobility move can be one of the best ways to get the hips opening up in all different directions. “It's taking you through that full range of motion, stretching all of your muscles while also mobilizing the hip,” Witte says.

1. 1.
   Come into a tabletop position on your hands and knees.
2. 2.
   Pick up one knee and lift it straight back behind you (like a donkey kick.) 
3. 3.
   Slowly circle it out to the side, opening up into “a classic peeing dog shape,” Witte says. 
4. 4.
   Continue the circle, bringing the knee back underneath you. 
5. 5.
   Repeat a handful of times, working to open into your full range of motion while keeping the lower back still. Then switch sides.