You also have hip adductor muscles (which include your pectineus, adductor longus, and adductor brevis) on the inside of your thigh, and hip abductor muscles (your side butt muscles, like the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus, as well as your tensor fasciae latae) on the outside. When you move your legs out to the side—say, if you’re doing a lateral lunge—your hip abductors are firing; when you bring them in, like when you hop your feet back to center in a jumping jack, your hip adductors are working. You can also consider your gluteus maximus (the largest muscle in your butt) part of this area too; it plays a role when you do pretty much any move that requires hip extension, like a glute bridge or deadlift.
While your butt muscles have different functions than your hip flexors, they also tend to work in tandem with them. That’s why some of the best stretches for hips target those surrounding muscles as well.
What’s the problem with tight hips?
Tight hips don’t just create problems in your hips; they can impact functioning (and lead to aches and pains) in a bunch of other body parts, too. That’s why addressing hip tightness is so important and impactful.
Specifically, tight hip flexors make it harder for your pelvis to rotate properly during exercise and everyday movements, which can cause your lower back to overcompensate, Teo Mendez, MD, an orthopedic surgeon at NY Orthopedics who focuses on sports-related injuries, musculoskeletal injuries, and arthritis, tells SELF. “This can be a setup for lower-back injury,” Dr. Mendez says. In fact, Dr. Herzberg notes that tight hips are often the reason people feel like they’ve strained or “thrown out” their back when squatting.
Too much tightness in your hips can also make it harder for your glutes to activate. Here’s why: They’re opposing muscle groups, so when one is really tight, the other becomes lengthened—which reduces its ability to contract. “Strong, powerful glutes create the anchor for your entire pelvis,” California-based trainer Holly Perkins, CSCS, tells SELF. So when they’re lengthened and compromised, it can throw off your body alignment and form, making your workouts less efficient and even potentially increasing your risk of injury, Perkins says. (For example, you may become more quad-dominant, which can weaken your hamstrings and even affect your knees, she explains.)