Build Strong Hips With These 8 Exercises
Hip muscles are responsible for most of our body’s stability. It is where our center of gravity is located — above the pivots. As an aspiring pro cheerleader or current squad member, strengthening your hip muscles is one of the ways to prevent yourself from falling over after a series of movements in dancing.
Hip exercises strengthen the joints and cartilage that connect your legs to your pelvis. As a result, your lower body becomes flexible for high kicks and stronger jumps. Not only that, but hip exercises prevent osteoporosis in the lumbar spine area — this prevents back pain, a stooped posture, and loss of height over time.
Why is this important for pro cheerleading? A lumbar spine in good condition makes it easy for you to bend forward and backward — a common move when it comes to arena dancing. With everything said, let’s explore various hip workouts you should include in your fitness routine.
1. The Frankenstein Walk
This workout trains your hips, quads, and hamstrings while increasing the range of motion of your lower ligaments. It’s a simple yet great workout if you struggle to do high kicks and toe touches.
2. Hip Circles
In terms of sideway flexibility and single-leg stability, hip circling is a workout you should do. The motion simulates more cartilage production and lubrication to your femoral head and pelvic sockets.
3. Banded Pull Through
You’re going to need a resistance band for this. Improve your sense of front-back balance and strengthen your glute muscles through banded glute pull-throughs. The right technique for this workout is to let your hip thrust forward when pulling the band and not your arms.
4. Side Plank with Knee Drive
Side planking is a great way to challenge your hips muscles into keeping your body at a straight but diagonal line. Add knee driving to it and you’ll also work on your glute muscles as well as your hip joints. Make sure to engage your core and planking arm to prevent a loss of stability.
5. Single Leg Hip-Lift
If you want a simple hip workout, then you should try the single-leg hip lift. By raising one leg and keeping it in the air, you’re adding weight and challenge as you thrust your hip upwards.
6. Split Squat
Just as the name suggests, you’ll be doing a combination of squats and splits. But instead of training your flexibility, split squats improve your leg and glute strength so you can easily transition from dance moves such as floorwork to a standing position.
7. Banded Ankle Kickback
You’re going to need a resistance band for this again. The technique to doing this exercise right is to keep the leg you’re standing on rigid. Then, engage your glute muscles as you kick the other leg back. You can do this without holding onto something but we wouldn’t recommend it.
8. Power Clean
Power cleans are a standard lifting exercise for bodybuilding. But it’s not about building your upper body muscles. This workout utilizes the explosive strength of your hips to lift a barbell off the ground and to your shoulders.
As you perform these exercises regularly, you’ll start to find them easy to do. Once you’re at that stage, start using weights and bands with higher resistance to avoid a plateau. Remember to breathe properly and eat your pre/post-workout snacks for energy.
Need a Great Workout Routine for Your Pro Cheer Audition Prep?
Pro cheerleaders stay fit, flexible, and strong so they can give out their best performance in the arena. However, achieving that wow-worthy, toned physique doesn’t happen overnight. You need to arm yourself with the right daily workouts.
Thinking of becoming a pro cheerleader?
We are offering you our fun, FREE (for a LIMITED time) POM FIT™ INTRO CLASS that teaches you beginner-friendly cardio moves.
To take your cheerleading fitness to the next level, we also have POM FIT™: GAMEDAY1™ - a series of challenging full-body cardio classes that include a body stretch class, kick stretch class, abdominal workout class, and more.
Join a POM FIT™ class below:
POM FIT™ INTRO CLASS (Free for a LIMITED time)
POM FIT™: GAMEDAY1™ (USD 27.00)
