Tight hips? A personal trainer reveals her four favorite moves for reducing tension in under five minutes

A sedentary lifestyle can have a negative impact on your health and prolonged periods of sitting can lead to tight or strained hip flexors. It can also cause the muscles in our hips to weaken.

With a never-ending to-do list on your hands, finding the time to stretch can seem impossible. But fitness coach Ally Aslaksen has created a simple five-minute mobility routine that incorporates four moves. This includes alternating lizard rotations, adductor rockers, a staggered stance lateral stretch and a wide squat hip lift.

“These are great stretches because they move your hips in planes of motion [directions of movement] that we don’t normally get into,” Washington-based physical therapist Jesse Lewis, founder of District Performance and Physio, says. “Rotation and lateral movement are directions we don’t often get into in our daily lives, so we often have to find ways to get our hips and body moving in those ways.”

Better yet, these moves can be done in minutes. Scroll down to find out how to do them.

How to do the hip mobility routine

Why do people get tension in their hips?

According to Lewis, tension can occur for a number of reasons. “Sometimes it’s that our movement routine isn’t varied enough,” he says. “So we might only be moving in a certain direction or pattern all of the time, running for example, and we’re not getting enough variety of movement. Or, we’re not moving enough because our jobs keep us in one position all day.”

But one of the most common reasons for hip tension? Hip weakness. “We see people all of the time who have been stretching for years but their tightness is actually from weakness,” he notes. “Once we start strengthening the weak muscles, their tightness improves.”

As such, it’s worth incorporating hip-strengthening exercises—like a squat, side leg raises and clams—into your routine that will work all three planes of motion.

For more ways to boost your hip strength, check out the best glute exercises or give this squat workout a go.