Most hip mobility exercises train three of the six directions a hip has. The pigeon, the lunge and the figure-four cover flexion, external rotation and the front of the hip. They appear in every routine because they are the three that feel like something is happening. The other three get almost nothing.
Sort the work by direction rather than by list and the gaps show up on their own. This page does that, using the app's own moves with their real types and holds, and it says plainly which direction no reading here can check.
The short answer
- The hip flexes, extends, abducts, adducts, and rotates inward and outward. Six directions.
- Routines sold as hip work usually cover three of them and skip the rest.
- Internal rotation is the one most often missing. It is the direction a hip needs to stand on one leg, change direction, and sit into a squat without the pelvis rolling under.
- Nothing in Limber's battery reads rotation. The five tests are the toe touch, knee-to-wall, shoulder reach, hip flexor and deep squat, and none of them is a rotation measure.
- Ten of the catalogue's 56 moves are filed to the hips. The ten body areas do not include the adductors.
Hip mobility exercises by direction
Every hip move the app holds, sorted by what the direction asks of the joint.
| Direction | What the thigh does | Moves in the catalogue |
|---|---|---|
| Flexion | Comes toward the chest | M017 Deep Squat Pry-Hold, M024 Happy Baby |
| Extension | Travels behind the body | M003 Half-Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch, M015 Standing Quad Stretch, M020 Lizard Lunge |
| Abduction | Goes out to the side | M018 Frog Rock, M019 Butterfly Stretch, M023 Cossack Squat Shift |
| Adduction | Crosses the midline | nothing filed to it |
| External rotation | Turns outward | M013 Pigeon Stretch, M004 Figure-4 Glute Stretch |
| Internal rotation | Turns inward | M012 90/90 Hip Switch, M022 Standing Hip CARs |
Six rows, and one of them is empty. That is not an oversight in the table.
Flexion, extension and the sides
Flexion is the direction almost nobody lacks, because sitting is flexion and a chair holds you in about ninety degrees of it for hours. The useful flexion work is the deep, loaded end of the range rather than the middle. M017 Deep Squat Pry-Hold is a 45-second hold with no equipment: get as low as you can, elbows inside the knees, and work the position gently. M024 Happy Baby is a 50-second hold on a mat and the calmest thing in the hip list, which is why it reads well at the end of a session rather than the start.
Extension is the front of the hip, and it is the direction a chair spends the day removing. M003 Half-Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch is a 40-second hold per side on a mat, and it is the only one of the three hip flexor moves flagged for contract-relax work. M015 Standing Quad Stretch is 30 seconds per side against a wall. M020 Lizard Lunge is 40 seconds per side and is filed to the hips and the hip flexors at once. All three fail the same way, which is that the pelvis tips and the lower back extends instead of the hip. Hip flexor stretches is the article about controlling that.
Abduction — the leg travelling out to the side — is trained mostly by lengthening the inner thigh. M018 Frog Rock is a 45-second dynamic move on a mat and is cleared for warm-ups. M019 Butterfly Stretch is a 45-second hold and takes contract-relax rounds. M023 Cossack Squat Shift is a 45-second dynamic move per side at level 3, and it is the one that loads the inner thigh under bodyweight rather than only stretching it.
Adduction — the leg crossing the midline against resistance — has no move of its own here, and the reason is structural. The app files moves to ten body areas, and the adductors are not one of them. Five moves carry the adductors as a secondary tag and the app folds that tag into the hips. So there is no adductor area, no adductor reading, and no adductor track. If a groin that gives way under load is your problem, this catalogue works around it rather than at it.
The two rotations
External rotation is the direction everything already trains. M013 Pigeon Stretch is a 45-second hold per side on a mat, filed to the hips and the glutes. M004 Figure-4 Glute Stretch is a 40-second hold per side. Both load the back of the hip, and which structure you are feeling — capsule, external rotators, glute — is not something you can tell from the inside. That matters less than it sounds, because you are training the direction, not a named muscle.
Internal rotation is the direction most often missing. M012 90/90 Hip Switch is a 45-second dynamic move on a mat at level 2, cleared for warm-ups, and it is the clearest way to work both rotations in one position: the front leg turns out, the back leg turns in. M022 Standing Hip CARs is a 40-second dynamic move per side with no equipment, and it takes the joint slowly through its whole outline so you find out where the outline stops.
Two articles go deeper: hip internal rotation on why the direction goes missing and how to check it, and the 90/90 position on setting it up so the hip does the work instead of the lower back.
What the evidence supports
Three findings shape everything above, and they should be graded rather than asserted.
Stretching is not the only way to raise range. Afonso and colleagues, in Healthcare in 2021, compared strength training against stretching for range gains and found them broadly comparable. Grade: mixed. The trials pooled were few, small and varied in how they measured, so this is a reason to take strength work in the lengthened position seriously — the Cossack shift, the pry-hold — and not a reason to stop stretching.
Bone sets a ceiling that no exercise moves. Frank and colleagues reviewed imaging of people without symptoms in Arthroscopy in 2015 and found cam-type hip morphology in roughly a third of asymptomatic volunteers and over half of asymptomatic athletes. Grade: reasonably solid for the prevalence, unsettled for what it means. A hip shape that limits range is common in people who feel entirely well, and finding it on a scan explains nobody's symptoms by itself.
The dose is smaller than people assume. Bandy and Irion, in Physical Therapy in 1994, found 30 seconds beat 15 and matched 60 over six weeks. Their 1997 follow-up in the same journal found one 30-second hold a day matched three. Grade: solid, and narrow — young healthy adults, hamstrings, six weeks. The catalogue's hip holds run 30 to 50 seconds, which sits at or above that mark — a judgement of ours, not a finding.
Pain that persists, wakes you at night, radiates into a limb, comes with numbness or weakness, or followed a fall or an injury is a matter for a clinician who can examine you. Nothing here diagnoses anything and nothing here is treatment.
The direction we cannot read
This is the part that goes against us, so it goes in full before any defence of it.
Limber's battery is five tests: the toe touch, the knee-to-wall, the shoulder reach, the hip flexor test and the deep squat. Not one of them measures rotation at either hip. The app's hips reading is built from two of those — half the deep squat and half the hip flexor test — and a squat is a flexion measure while the hip flexor test reads how far the thigh drops toward extension. So you can train internal rotation for three months here and no number on this site or in the app will move because of it.
That is a real hole and there is no rotation test planned in the build. What the readings can still do is tell you about the two directions they cover. The deep squat test scores the whole lower body in four bands, and the Range Score puts hips and hip flexors together as one of five groups. Neither becomes a rotation measure by being averaged.
Where to start
Take a reading before you build a routine, because a plan without a reading is a guess with a schedule attached. The hip flexor test and the deep squat take about two minutes between them and cost nothing. If getting down to the floor and back up is what you want the hips for, the sitting-rising test scores that out of ten on its authors' rubric — outside Limber's battery, outside the Range Score, and carrying an association with mortality in one cohort rather than a promise about yours.
Then pick one move per direction rather than four for the direction you like. A session is a warm-up of one or two dynamic moves, a main block, and one long calm hold to finish — the 90/90 switch or the frog rock at the front, the holds in the middle, happy baby at the end. Hold 20 to 60 seconds. Breathe in for four and out for six. The target is a mild stretch and never a sharp one.
The rest of this cluster is under hips and legs. If the word "tight" is what brought you here, tight hips: the causes sorts out which of four different problems you have, because they feel the same from the inside and need different work.
Questions
What are the six directions of hip movement?
Flexion brings the thigh toward the chest, extension takes it behind the body, abduction takes it out to the side, adduction brings it across the midline, and the hip rotates both inward and outward at the same time as any of those. Most routines cover flexion, extension and external rotation. The two rotations and adduction are where the gaps usually sit.
Which hip direction is most often missing?
Internal rotation. It is trained by almost nothing people do on purpose, it is limited by bone shape in some people and by habit in most, and it is the direction a hip needs to stand on one leg, change direction and sit into a squat without the pelvis rolling under. The 90/90 position and standing hip circles are the two moves in this catalogue that work it directly.
Does Limber measure hip rotation?
No. The battery is the toe touch, knee-to-wall, shoulder reach, hip flexor and deep squat, and none of those is a rotation measure. The hips area is built from half the deep squat and half the hip flexor test, both of which read other directions. There is no rotation test in the app and none in the build.
How long should I hold a hip stretch?
Somewhere between 20 and 60 seconds, and the catalogue's hip holds sit at 40 to 50. The best evidence on dose comes from hamstring trials, where 30 seconds beat 15 and matched 60 over six weeks, and one hold a day matched three. Total time across the week matters more than the length of any single hold.
Can strength work replace stretching for hip range?
Possibly, at least in part. A 2021 review found strength training and stretching produced broadly comparable range gains, though on few and varied trials. The practical reading is that loaded work at the long end of a range — a deep squat pry-hold, a Cossack shift — earns its place alongside holds rather than instead of them.
Why does the front of my hip pinch in a deep stretch?
A pinch at the front of the hip or the groin is usually contact rather than length, and it does not soften with time in the position the way a stretch does. Ease out of it rather than breathing into it, and change the angle: width, foot turn-out, or how much the thigh is turned in. If it catches, clicks painfully or lingers afterwards, see a clinician who can examine the joint.