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Jul 03, 2023

We asked a yoga teacher to design a yoga for hips and lower back routine you can do without equipment and strengthen your mid-body

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Sitting down too much, not stretching, and having muscle injuries elsewhere are common contributors to hip and lower back problems. However, you can help prevent these mobility difficulties with a short yoga for hips and lower back routine.

While some strength workouts require lots of equipment or a gym to get results, you only need one of the best yoga mats for some underfoot grip and a more comfortable experience during floor-based poses.

Even if you don't have trouble with your mid-body, the hips and back are the foundation of a functional body that moves well, says expert yoga teacher, Jodie Roberts.

“Sitting down a lot means we overuse some muscles and underuse others in our hips and low backs. This can lead to poor hip mobility, poor movement patterns, poor posture, inhibited muscles and injuries and pain, but yoga can be a great tool to help,” she says.

This is why we asked Roberts to design a short, 10-pose yoga for hips and lower back routine you can do at home or the gym, and when you're short on time, to stretch out the muscles and undo the effects of prolonged sitting.

Jodie Roberts is a certified yoga teacher and coach with a focus on creativity, breath, and alignment. Her mission is to create space for people to find their true self through the power of yoga.

Like the top yoga stretches for beginners, the poses in Roberts' routine are accessible to all experience levels and suitable for at-home practice. It's designed as a complete flow session, although you can always do your favorite poses outside of your dedicated practice.

Child’s pose is a great way to ease into yoga. It is physiologically soothing and offers a passive release for the back, decompression of the spine, and stretch for the hips, while gently compressing the hip flexors.

The combination of cat and cow pose is a classic in yoga and for good reason: it’s a great way to mobilize the spine, plus it feels good. Add in hip circles to mobilize the hips, too.

This active super-stretch decompresses the lower spine and releases your back body, including calves, hamstrings, glutes, and shoulders. It promotes good posture, stability, and balance.

A power pose for working your lower back and hips, this twisted lunge helps improve balance and stability, strengthens your legs, glutes, and core, and stretches the hip flexors and lumbar spine.

Squats are beneficial for the hips and lower back as they offer a chance to deeply decompress the spine and adductors. The inner hip flexors are compressed while the outer hips and groin muscles are stretched.

The lizard pose is a deep hip stretch to help increase mobility and flexibility. It stretches your hip flexors and quads, so its the perfect antidote to lots of sitting,

The ultimate back stretch, use sphinx pose to gently compress the low back and achieve spinal extension.

Reclined pigeon is an external hip opener that decompresses the lower spine and stretches outer hips, piriformis, and hamstring attachments, and is a great pose to counter a day of sitting.

The Bridge pose is designed to strengthen your back muscles, including glutes and hamstrings, and another good posture to relieve the effects of sitting for too long.

Twists help neutralize and realign the spine and can be useful for back pain. This pose stretches the outer hips and glutes and massages the back of the hips.

Finish your sequence with a few minutes lying on your back in Savasana. You can place a bolster or blanket under your knees to reduce any tension in your lower back.

Yoga for hips and lower back routines like this are ideal for boosting your flexibility and increasing your mobility, which are both crucial for helping you stay active throughout your life.

If you want to focus on your mobility a bit more, then it's worth taking on a dedicated hip mobility yoga flow routine. Fortunately, you only need a yoga mat for that routine too, so you can practice both sessions at home.

These are both good options for targeting specific areas of your body. However, if you're looking more generally to get the benefits of yoga, then a short morning yoga routine is a great way to start your day off right.

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Annabel Lee is a freelance writer specializing in wellbeing with over a decade of experience. Her work has appeared in titles like Glamour, Business Insider, and Huffington Post. Although she no longer teaches, Annabel trained as a yoga and mindfulness teacher and is also a co-host of the Selfie Development podcast, which explores the world of wellness, self-development, and spirituality.