Plank Hip Dips

Start in a forearm plank: elbows under shoulders, forearms flat on the floor, body in a straight line from head to heels, core braced (bracing) with the spine neutral (see spine-positioning). Keeping the shoulders and upper back still, rotate/lower the hips a few inches toward the floor on one side — stopping just short of the hip touching down — then use the trunk on the opposite side to pull the hips back up to level. Repeat on the other side, alternating.

This is a genuinely different movement from two other exercises that share overlapping names in this graph, worth naming explicitly to avoid confusion:

• Not hip-drop (pelvic drop / hip hike): that is a standing, single-leg exercise on a step where the STANCE-leg glute medius is the primary agonist controlling a small pelvic tilt. Plank hip dips are prone (forearm plank), both feet on the floor, and the primary agonists are the obliques and quadratus lumborum, not glute medius.
• Not the "side plank dip" / "side plank hip lift" (a progression of exercise-side-plank): that is performed from a SIDE plank, dipping and lifting the SAME hip repeatedly. Plank hip dips are performed from a PRONE (front) plank and alternate the dip direction to both sides.
• Not the slang "hip dips" body-shape term (the soft-tissue indentation below the greater trochanter) — an unrelated aesthetic term, not a movement.

Mechanically, each dip is an eccentric lengthening of the obliques and quadratus lumborum on the side the hip is rising away from (as gravity pulls the hip down), followed by a concentric contraction of those same muscles pulling the hip back to level — so which side is the "working" side alternates with the direction of the dip. quadratus-lumborum and the obliques (external-oblique, internal-oblique) are the prime movers of this lateral flexion and return; the transverse abdominis and rectus abdominis stabilize against unwanted trunk flexion or rotation so the motion stays a clean frontal-plane dip, and gluteus medius makes a minor, secondary contribution to pelvis control.

Coaching:

• Keep the shoulders and upper back still — the movement should come from the hips/waist, not from rocking the shoulders.
• Stop the dip just above the floor; don't let the hip actually rest down, and don't use momentum to snap back up.
• Move slowly and with control on both the down and up phase — the eccentric lowering is as important as the lift back to level.
• Keep the neck in a neutral line; don't let the head drop or crane to watch the hips.

Progressions: slow the tempo, add a brief pause at the bottom of each dip, or add a light ankle weight/vest. Regression: reduce the range of the dip, or perform from the knees.

• Forearm plank; alternately dip the hips a few inches toward the floor on each side and pull back to level.
• Trains dynamic lateral core control — obliques and quadratus lumborum as primary movers, TVA/rectus abdominis as anti-flexion/anti-rotation stabilizers.
• Distinct from ex.hip-drop (standing, glute-medius-driven), the side-plank dip (single-side, from a side plank), and the unrelated slang "hip dips" body-shape term.
• No peer-reviewed EMG study isolating this specific variation was found in a literature check (2026-09-16) — the muscle claims are standard trunk-kinesiology reasoning about which muscles produce/control lateral flexion, not an exercise-specific EMG figure. Treat any specific activation-percentage claim about this exact exercise as unverified until a direct study is found.

• core-stability-vs-strength — a dynamic-stability drill in the same family.
• exercise-plank — the static anti-extension base position this exercise is built from.
• exercise-side-plank — the related but mechanically distinct side-plank dip progression.
• exercise-shoulder-taps — a sibling dynamic-plank drill (anti-rotation rather than lateral flexion).
• hip-drop — a different exercise that shares the words "hip" and "dip" but not the movement or primary muscle.
• external-oblique, internal-oblique, quadratus-lumborum — prime movers.