You Probably Need to be Hinging
Let me tell you why
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I’ve been out of the dating game for a long time now.
I’ve heard and read no shortage of stories about what it’s like out there.
From what I understand though, Hinge is one of the better apps out there for people trying to meet someone. So today I’m going to tell you why you should be using it.
Alright, I can’t even keep that up for very long. That’s not what we’re going to talk about.
Hello friends, happy Friday. How’s everyone doing? Did the week treat you well? I hope it did.
Summer is here, the sun is shining, the tank is cleeannn.
We ARE going to be talking about hinging, but not the dating kind.
No, no. We are going to talk about the exercise, get super strong kind.
Do you do any hinging? If you don’t you need to start.
I’m not the guy to tell you that any exercise is mandatory, but the hinge is not just one exercise. A hinge is a category of movement, within which there are several exercises that you could pick from. I recommend very strongly that you add at least one of them to your workout routine. Let’s talk about why.
First, which exercises?
Before we talk about why you should do it, let’s talk about which exercises make up the hinge category.
A hinge is anything where your hips act as a… you know, hinge.
Basically, your knees stay slightly bent but they don’t move back and forth. Your hips act as the point of movement, moving back and forth.
Within the category of a hinge there are several exercises we can choose from:
Romanian deadlift
Trap bar deadlift
Deadlift
Good morning
B-stance RDL
Single leg RDL
Zercher RDL
Hip thrust
45 degree back extension
Straight leg deadlift
Personally, I’m very fond of the classic RDL and the trap bar DL, but that’s just me.
Pick whichever one or two of these you like the best and add em to the arsenal. You will help yourself in the long run.
What do hinges do?
I’m here talking about hinges, so what exactly do they do?
I put hinges right up there with squats as one of the most powerhouse exercises for building strength and muscle.
The main movers involved in a hinge are your glutes and hamstrings. The glutes are literally the largest, and possibly most powerful, muscle in your entire body.
Your glutes will play a very large role in doing things like, you know, standing up, going up stairs, walking, running, jumping, playing sports. Maybe you guys don’t, but I rely on doing most of those things every day.
As for the hamstrings, we need those to keep a strong, stable and healthy knee joint. The hamstrings work to limit the amount our shin bone can move forward. This is important because a lot of ACL injuries can happen with too much forward movement of the shin bone. So, strong hamstrings = healthier knees.
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The secondary considerations
While the primary considerations of hinging are important, the secondary aspects are just as neat.
First, heavy ass hinging will strengthen your grip(in most cases), and a strong grip is essential for everyday life. You want to continue to be able to carry your groceries right?
Next, your core. When we do a heavy hinge, we need to really brace to keep a stiff midsection to avoid any energy leakage. When we brace, our deep core muscles contract around our spine to help keep it stable and protected, so you are getting a good deal of core stimulus that you wouldn’t get from other exercises.
Also, our upper back and lats. When we do a hinge with heavy weight, part of the movement is to pull our shoulder blades into a depressed and slightly retracted position. The muscles responsible for this are our traps, rhomboids, and lats. No, we aren’t taking those muscles through their ROM so hinges won’t be the most responsible for growing those muscles, but if you see someone that can hinge a lot of weight, chances are pretty good they will have pretty strong and pronounced lats and traps as well.
Lastly, and probably most interestingly, is our lower back.
The lower back is a bit different than other muscles in that it doesn’t really have a traditional ROM, but it more so works in a reactive way. When we put ourselves in a position where a weight wants to pull our upper and mid backs forward, the erectors kick into gear to help keep us upright. Can anyone think of a position where a heavy weight wants to pull our upper and mid backs forward?
I can. A heavy hinge.
So to sum up, we’ve got our glutes and hams doing most of the heavy lifting, literally. But then we’ve also got our grip, core, and our entire back coming along for the ride.
All from one single exercise.
I’ve said a lot that if something seems too good to be true, it is. This is one of the rare cases that it’s not.
All of this does really happen with a simple hinge.
Now, while this is great it can also be very fatiguing on the body if we do too much of it.
For this reason, I recommend keeping your hinges in the 2, maybe 3 sets of 4-8 rep range. Going close to, but not right to failure.
I don’t recommend going very high rep on hinges because of that fatigue accumulation, and it also becomes easier for those secondary muscles to get tired before your glutes and hams when you go very high rep.
Have I convinced you that you should probably do hinges yet?
If not, exercises like RDL’s have been shown to have one of the largest muscle growth effects on the glute region so… you know. Maybe that will do it.
I’m going to leave you there for today. Do your hinges.
I appreciate you all for being here.
See you next week.
-Justin