Hinge and Squat Movement Patterns

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Squats And Deadlifts; Not Just For The Boys

This post will expand on the "movement based training" post from last year. If you haven’t read the post or aren’t familiar with this approach to exercise programming I would recommend starting here for basic perspective. In this post I’m going to focus primarily on the lower body portion of a movement-based program and expand a bit on the content from last time.

The lower body portion of a movement based system should be thought of as having two main movement patterns: “squat” and “hinge”. The “squat” pattern contains knee dominant exercises like squats, lunges, step-ups, etc., which are biased toward the anterior chain or the front of the hips. The “hinge” pattern is hip dominant and includes all deadlift varieties and hip extension exercises. These exercises are biased toward the posterior chain or the back of the hips. By splitting the lower body exercises into these two categories we can control the strength balance around the hip complex, which is very important for performance enhancement as well as injury prevention.

Traditional Deadlift

With the deadlift ("hinge") there is a much stronger focus on extending (opening) the hips as the weight is lifted off the floor. You will notice that the athlete above begins with the hips higher and the back more parallel to the floor than with a squat. This opening of the hip angle makes the glutes and hamstrings the focus since they are the primary hip extending muscles.

Back squat                          Front squat 

With the squat we see that the hips are lower, which increases the angle at the knee making it a more quad dominant movement. Bar placement will change the loading a bit with the front squat being the most quad dominant of the two due to the anterior loading and more upright body position (less acute hip angle). 

Barring injury or major movement restriction I almost always teach these two movements because of the benefit they provide and how functional to life they are. I will generally work into the deadlift after a few weeks/months depending on ability, but the squat movement can usually be taught right away unloaded.

Other "hinge" pattern (hip dominant) exercises:  

Romanian Deadlift (RDL) - though I prefer to see a neutral neck like the picture below.

Single Leg RDL

Glute/Ham Developer (GHD) - Hip Extension

Hip Extension

Single Leg Hip Extension

Hip Thrust (loaded hip extension, can be done with shoulders elevated like the hip extension above)

Other "squat" pattern (knee dominant) exercises:

Lunge

Step Up

Rear Foot Elevated or Bulgarian Split Squat

While this is not an exhaustive list it represents some of the best exercises from each group. 
Make sure to alternate between each lower body movement to evenly train the hips and don't neglect the single leg exercises either, balance needs to happen side to side as well as front to back.

-KO