Tone Hips With One-Legged Exercises

Train more with one-legged (unilateral) exercises to better tone your hips. The muscles that move your hip joint (mainly gluteus medius) are activated more with one-legged exercises. Many running injuries can also be traced to a weak gluteus medius.



Sometimes, too much focus is placed on two-legged (bilateral) exercises. These two-legged exercises, like squats, are needed in your exercise program. But one-legged exercises improve your muscular balance in each leg. Having dynamic balance means that you are able to maintain your center of gravity over a constantly changing base of support. You cannot have dynamic balance without muscular balance.

To achieve muscular balance in your lower body, one-legged exercises should be a big part of your training program. These one-legged exercises can be performed as strengh or power (full speed) exercises.

One lower body exercise that should be in your program is one-legged step ups with knee lift (pictured above). This exercise is done one leg at a time to force each leg to work evenly. For example, you would do 10 repetitions with your right leg and then 10 repetitions with your left leg.

The hanging leg should not touch the bench and you should lower your body under control. This exercise can also be done with dumbbells to increase difficulty. Other good one-legged exercises would be squats and lunges. Add more one-legged exercises to your training program to better tone your hips.

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Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
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