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Condition Your Outer Hips

Now let’s talk about your outer thigh muscles. This muscle group plays a big role in keeping you from toppling over sideways, as well as stabilizing your hip when you’re standing on one leg. (Think about what happens when you walk or run, and when you do balance exercises. The outer hip muscles are hard at work during these activities.)

When abductors get overly tight, they may tilt the pelvis towards the outside of the thigh (on the same side.) This, in turn, may change the mechanics of your pelvis and low back such that the pelvis is down on one side and up on the other. This is often referred to as "hip-hiking."

To adapt to hip-hiking, the spine may curve sideways. When your right hip hikes up (and your outer hip muscles are on a stretch, relative to the left side), the right side of your spine curves outward, which may tighten or overwork the muscles on that side. This means that in our example the muscles on the left side of your lumbar spine will likely be weaker than the right.

This muscle imbalance is not only related to tight outer thigh muscles but is often seen in cases of scoliosis, as well. Either way, you may experience pain in the hip, pain in the back or both.﻿﻿ Your hip motion may diminish and you may become stiff.

How to Fix Tight Outer Thigh Muscles and Oblique Pelvic Tilt

As with quads and hamstrings, there are two approaches to release the outer thigh. For the best results, I suggest using them in combination.

Stretch your outer hip

Strengthen your inner thigh, aka groin muscles. One way to do this is to work on your one-legged balance. ﻿ ﻿

Learn more about how the outer hip muscles, also known as the hip abductors, move the hip and thigh with the gluteus medius muscle.