How to Improve Hip Mobility: Where to Start and How to Progress
The internet is full of hip mobility advice — and it can be incredibly confusing to navigate.
Here's a clear, progressive framework for building real hip mobility for anyone who cannot get assessed in person, or isn’t quite readdy to try a platform like Operation Human First that guides you through how to assess your hip to determine your start point.
If you need a free resource that gives you a general roadmap, this is for you.
Start Here: Why Hip Rotation Comes First
As mentioned above, in a perfect world, you'd get assessed by a professional who maps out exactly what's limited and gives you a sequenced plan based on what they find.
Outside of that, if we have to pick the single best starting point for the most people, it's hip internal rotation.
Your hip is a ball-and-socket joint. It is literally designed to rotate — that's its primary function. More importantly, if you go all the way down to the deepest layer of your hip — past the muscles— you get to the joint capsule and ligaments.
These structures wrap around your hip in a rotational manner. When they're restricted, they can limit the muscular layers above them. You can spend all the time you want on the outer muscles and spin your tires if the deep tissue is the actual limitation.
So, generally I would try addressing the deep tissue before the superficial tissue.
And, I’d start with rotation movement (which targets the deep tissue) before linear movement (flexion, extension, abduction, adduction).
How to Assess Your Starting Point
Before you train anything, get a picture of where you actually are. Here's a simple self-test for active hip internal rotation:
Lie on your back. Place a yoga block between your knees lengthwise — this positions most people about hip-width apart. With your hips bent to 90 degrees, spin both thighs inward so your feet rotate out to the sides. This is hip internal rotation. The video above will give you a visual.
Look at how far your feet travel. Can you see your full foot outside your thigh? That's a solid amount of range. This means you may get to skip the stretching, PAILs/RAILs, and jump to the “back filling” step.
Can't see your pinky toe at all or can only see your few smallest toes? This tells you that your mobility is limited.
This all looks at your active range of motion — how far your own muscles can pull you.
It’s also important to get a rough sense of your passive range of motion, which is how far the joint goes when gravity or a support is doing the work rather than your muscles.
A modified 90/90 position (as shown in the video) gives you a feel for this.
The gap between those two ranges matters. If your joint can passively go somewhere your muscles can't actively control, that's called a passive-to-active gap. It's especially common in hypermobile individuals — though anyone can experience it.
If that's you, the next priority is closing that gap with positional isometric work and similar tools, not chasing more passive range. We will speak to that in another blog.
Document your starting point. Take a photo. Much like watching hair grow, you often won't notice changes day to day. However, comparing week one to week eight often shows real progress that you hadn't consciously registered yet.
Knowing where you started also keeps you motivated when the improvements feel slow.
Choosing Your Entry Position
Once you know where your range sits, we then need to find a position that puts you at your end range without forcing you into pain, cramping, or compensation.
The 90/90 stretch is everywhere online — and for many people with limited hip rotation, it's actually too aggressive to start with. It demands a lot from the hip, pelvis, and low back simultaneously. If you try it and immediately cramp or pinch, that's your body telling you something.
A modified 90/90 — where you offload the front knee and walk your hands back behind you — is a better option for many people. However, it is still too aggressive for many people.
One that doesn't get nearly enough attention online: the wall setup (outlined in the video).
Lie on your back close to a wall, knees bent at 90 degrees, feet on the wall. This is essentially that same internal rotation test position from earlier, but you can place your feet on the wall and gently walk them a little wider to get into a passive stretch. This often offers less hip pinching and the ability to work both sides simultaneously.
A lot of people — including Kinstretch students in Operation Human First classes — find this one a game-changer.
Don't Just Stretch — Train the Range
Passive stretching can help you pick up some flexibility. But range of motion you can't control isn't range of motion your body trusts, and it won't stick. The goal is range of motion that is usable, stable, and strong — that your nervous system actually understands and has good reason to trust.
PAILs and RAILs (discussed in this blog here) are one of the most effective tools for acquiring new range of motion at a specific joint.
You're always loading the tissue that's limiting you before you try to go further. I’ll put some free tutorials that you can follow along with to experience PAILs/RAILs for yourself.
Once you've used PAILs and RAILs to open up a bit more range, the next step is backfilling — filling that new range with control and strength so it doesn't disappear on you:
Passive range holds: Use external support to get to end range, then try to hold and control the position.
Liftoffs: No hands — use your own hip muscles to lift your foot up into range and control it back down.
Eccentrics: Move into the stretch while the muscles responsible for getting you out of it are actively working. This lengthens the muscle under load, which builds strength at end range and helps make the new range stick.
Progressive overload: Add an ankle weight to your liftoffs and progressively increase load over time. Or skip the ankle weight and move toward loaded compound or closed chain movements — which leads us to the next piece.
The Other Half of Hip Rotation: Training the Pelvis to Move
Almost everything above involves the femur moving on the pelvis — the ball spinning in the socket. That's one half of hip rotation.
The other half — pelvis moving on the femur — is easily just as important and gets overlooked constantly. Moving the pelvis over a fixed thigh is not just relevant for hip health; it has significant carryover to low back function and a range of other issues seen in clinical practice.
You can do this on hands and knees, in a half-kneeling position, or in standing with a slight hip hinge. These are not the only options, but they are great ways to start learning.
In standing, the cues that matter: keep your knee tracking over the middle of your foot and maintaining pressure through the ball of your big toe and inner heel help to keep your femur from externally rotating or “running away” from internal rotation.
Work on rotating the pelvis toward the standing leg while keeping both of those anchors stable helps to train internal rotaiton of the hip.
That's what we call closed-chain hip work — and it's the bridge between isolated mobility training and everything you're already doing in the gym (and daily life).
How to Work on Hip Mobility Without Adding More Exercises
You don't need a separate 20-60 minute mobility session. You need integration.
Your existing exercises — reverse lunges, kickstand hinges, etc. — can all be tweaked to include hip internal rotation work.
Using the tips in the video above you can turn exercises like lunges into a hip internal rotation drill and hit two birds with one stone. Same goes for hinges. The training is already happening; you're just adding a rotational element to it.
More importantly: what you do between sessions makes a massive difference in the progress that you see. A few hip rotations while you're sitting in a waiting room. A closed-chain hip CAR while you're standing at the counter waiting for coffee to brew. One minute of this, three or four times through the day, adds up to WAY more progress than most people realize.
Daily frequency with small doses beats occasional long sessions.
Where to Go From Here
Hip mobility isn't one thing — it's a sequence. Start with the deep tissue. Prioritize rotation, and internal rotation specifically. Assess your active and passive range, document your baseline, and choose an entry position that matches where your body actually is. Then build on it: stretch, load, backfill, integrate. After this, you can progress on to your linear movements like flexion, extension, abduction, and adduction.
If you want structured guidance through this process, Operation Human First has class pathways built into it that walk you through improving rotation as well as every other movement in the hip. Join the family and explore what's available anytime.
If you want some free videos to try, I’ll leave a bunch of tutorials here that will give you an opportunity to try various exercises.
Whether you go the pure Kinstretch route, layer it into your strength work, or do some combination of both, the principles don't change. You're building a hip that moves well, loads well, and stays that way.
Free Tutorials
Hip PAILs/RAILs Setup
Alternative Hip PAILs/RAILs Setup
Gym Hip PAILs/RAILs Setup
All Fours Closed Chain Hip CARs
Standing Closed Chain Hip CARs
Standard Open Chain Hip CARs
Isolated Hip Rotation
Full Hip Rotation Class with Back Filling
Author: Alex Murphy | Physical Therapist, Kinstretch Instructor, FRCms, FRSC, FRAs, FR
This blog and content is for educational purposes only and does not constitute physical therapy, medical advice, or a patient-provider relationship. While the author is a trained physical therapist, nothing here should be taken as clinical guidance specific to your situation. If you're dealing with pain, please work with a qualified healthcare provider who can assess you directly.
