Hip Flexor Strength for a Stronger Core

We’ve all been there, our feet cut on a steep wall and we curse our sloppy core. This is the part where many of us head to the weight room and punch out sit ups and crunches to failure, that will certainly help keep our feet on the wall next time right? Before stepping back into this pain cave the next time you’re at the gym I would suggest re-examining what we define as our core.

Our Rectus Abdominis or Abs make up a portion of our anterior or frontal core musculature. We associate these with “staying tight” on the wall, plus everyone loves to have a slimmed down six pack look, hence all the climbers at the gym doing weighted sit ups at the end of a session. The problem with this strategy of tons of “ab work” is that the abs are responsible for a rather small portion of what really makes up our “core”. While they’re an important group to keep strong, when was the last time you were climbing and your abs gave out from fatigue? The issue of feet picking or cutting due to a loss of body tension usually stems from failure in other muscle groups - namely those in the posterior chain and occasionally the hip flexors.

The posterior chain is a large collection of some of our biggest and most powerful muscle groups that run along the back side of our bodies, effectively starting at the hamstrings and running all the way up into our lats. We can talk for hours about the posterior chain and it’s nuances but today I want to address the culprits in the front, our often forgotten about hip flexors.

The Hip Flexors are actually made up of five different muscles, the Psoas Major, Iliacus, Rectus Femoris, Pectineus, and the Sartorius. For the sake of simplicity and time let’s just refer to them as a group and single unit in this post. The Hip Flexors are largely responsible for raising our legs out in front of us, so naturally, they play a significant part in our ability to keep our feet into the wall, especially on steep terrain. If your feet do cut on the steeps and you’re able to kick them back onto the wall, it’s your hip flexors that are doing the bulk of the heavy lifting there.

Luckily the Hip Flexors are an easy set of muscles to target and strengthen. A great starting progression is to sit on the floor with your legs straight out in front of you. Keep your knees locked out and raise one leg as high as possible, lower and repeat for the other side. A fun variation to this is to place yoga blocks, a kettlebell, or dumbbell on end next to your ankles and when you raise your legs move them over the object/s side to side.

Of course a classic hip flexor exercise is the Hanging Straight Leg Raise performed on a bar or rings. This is quite a bit more difficult than the Seated SLR but it also more closely mimics the movement patterns we encounter in climbing. The trick to the Hanging SLR is being able to check any swing that develops, using any sort of momentum negates the benefit of the exercise. Another very useful exercise is the standing or hanging hip flexor raise. This can be done with a mini band or kettlebell but the band works best. Loop the band around both feet and simply pull one leg up until your thigh is parallel to the ground, hold that position for 15-20 seconds. If using a KB place your foot through the handle and lift up, know that this becomes very taxing on the foot musculature also and isn’t advised with heavy weights.

Adding in a hip flexor exercise to any workout is an easy way to help round out that portion of your anterior core strength. I’ve found cycling various core exercises throughout the duration of a training program is an easy way to keep the sessions interesting while still being able to target a variety of “core” muscle groups. Try a variation of the Hip Flexor Iso Holds shown above next time you’re looking to add a fun new piece to your climbing specific workout.