To complete this exercise, he instructs his patients to start off using a light resistance band. "Lie on your back and bend your hips to about 45 degrees and your knees to 90 degrees. Keep both knees and feet touching. Using a resistance band, try to rotate your hips out towards the floor, keeping your feet close together."
"Once that becomes easy, either use a band with more tension or do the clamshells lying on one side instead of your back. With the knees and hips bent to roughly the same angles that you did with the bilateral clamshells on your back, tie the band around your knees and keep the feet together. Rotate your top hip outward so that your knees separate. The goal is to have a 90-degree angle between the leg on the ground and the leg in the air."
You should feel a burn on the outside portion of the gluteus. Busby recommends completing four sets of 20 repetitions 1 to 2 times every other day.
More: Hip Strengthening and Mobility Exercises for Runners
Another exercise that isolates the hip abductors is hip hikes. To compete this exercise, stand on a raised platform a few inches off the ground (a few books or a stair works perfect). Stand sideways and let one leg dangle off the side. Keep the stabilizing leg straight and let your hip on your unsupported leg lower to the ground.
Continue to keep your balancing leg straight, hike your hip up on the lowered side so that it rises higher than the stabilizing hip. Lower and repeat. The stabilizing hip should not move during the exercise.
After a few repetitions, you should start to feel a burn in the gluteus medius (side of the gluteus). Complete two sets of 20 bilaterally.
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It will take a few weeks for you to begin noticing a difference in your strength, but even after you start to feel better, it's a good idea to continue to progress these strengthening exercises to prevent further injury in the future. Stretching of the TFL is also important to keep up with.
"There's a lot of debate out there about stretching, if it helps to prevent injury or if it increases the likelihood of an injury occurring," Busby says. "I'm a firm believer in stretching muscles once they are properly warmed up, especially after a workout. This can help prevent stiffness later on and help to prevent DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness), which can occur days later."
More: Runners and Weak Hips: 5 Hip-Strengthening Exercises
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