Ok, so it is not necessarily "hip" in the sense that it is "cool" or "fashionable"…although it is certainly quickly becoming more and more "fashionable" to be a triathlete. What this post is really about, however, is how your success in each discipline in triathlon is highly dependent on how effectively you use your hips. I know….what a clever post title! What?…you are not impressed? Well, whatever…I thought it was good.

Anyway, let’s talk about how using your hips properly in swimming, biking, and running can increase your performance. Now, it could be that you already use your hips correctly in some, if not all, of these three disciplines. But, chances are that you could at least use a little reminder of how to use your hips for power and posture, and many of you could probably use a little "hip 101". I won’t try to fool you into believing that I am the expert on this subject but I will give you what I have learned thus far and point you in the direction of some good resources that will show you what I am talking about.

Before I get started, I have to give some credit to my Dad for this post. I got the idea for this post while he and I were wakeboarding in Kauai in September of (2010). He tricked me by taking lessons in Florida before we went to Kauai and ended up smoking me out there on the water (what a cheater). The one piece of advice that he kept giving me was to push my hips out so that I wasn’t bent over at the waist…at the time, I didn’t realize that he was relaying advice that he got from the professional wakeboarder that he took lessons from in Florida (again I say, what a cheater!). However, when I did that, my muscles weren’t as tired, I had better control over where I was going, and I was more stable. My thoughts immediately went to my swim coaching with Total Immersion where I had learned about the importance of the hips in developing the freestyle swim stroke. As I began to think about it more, I realized that each sport in triathlon actually had quite a bit to do with how you use your hips (mostly about positioning them properly so that you can engage core muscles in the most effective manner). Not only that, but almost every sport or activity seems to be about how you use your hips. Just do a google search on swinging a bat or a golf club and see how much info you get about using your hips.

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