3 Reasons Why Compression Strength Is So Vital To Train

If you’ve been following me on Instagram you’ll know that I’ve been talking about compression strength fairly regularly for nearly four months now. I’ve been running a 4 week class series all about compression strength, exploring it in real detail with some wonderful students. Because I believe everyone should know how to train their compression strength, and it should be a priority. 

I’m on a mission to make it as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. And I’m continuing to explore my “compression obsession”, sharing my thoughts around why this unique type of strength is so important, not only for training bigger skills in certain movement practises, but also for long term health and well being. 

But what even is compression strength I hear you asking? 

I think of it simply as the ability to close the angle at the front of your hip by lifting your leg. You primarily use your hip flexors for this. The hip flexors consist of 5 key muscles that contribute to hip flexion: iliacus, psoas, pectineus, rectus femoris, and sartorius. How easily and how much you can close that angle of the front of your hip is determined by how strong these muscles are and therefore how much compression strength you have as a result. 

When we think of training compression strength we often picture seated leg lifts… But that exercise is frequently done incorrectly, and it’s not the only compression exercise in the world or the most useful. Leg lifts aren’t super fun either, and they aren’t always the most accessible exercise. While they definitely have their place, there are many other fun and creative ways to train and explore compression strength, which is what I’m on a mission to discover and share. 

So why train it at all? Is it actually important? 

I think it is. . I want to share 3 things that you need compression strength for that highlight why it’s so important to train.

1. Walking And Taking Strides

Compression strength plays a part in our ability to walk and have good mobility. The same muscles we need for compression strength are also used to take steps. To walk quickly, to take big strides and to run. Because compression strength is closing the angle of the front of the hip by lifting the leg, the hip flexors clearly play a big part in this. There have been studies analysing the muscles specifically for this type of movement, which show how important the hip flexors are:

Neptune et al. (2008) found that the hip flexors, iliopsoas and rectus femoris, made larger contributions to swing initiation and trunk propulsion, respectively, as walking speed increased.

The hip flexors appear to be an important compensatory mechanism for decreased plantar flexor output at higher walking speeds.

So for one of the most simple forms of movement, strong hip flexors are essential. 

Having the strength to take strides and move the leg forwards will only be enhanced with improved compression strength. We can take this further and think about climbing up the stairs or hiking up a mountain, where every time you take a step you’re lifting your leg up towards you and closing the angle of the front of the hip.

How I’m thinking of it is that any compression strength I build now will help with my ability to move well as I age. 

2. Active Flexibility And Static Holds

If we need compression strength in order to lift our leg and move it around, we also need it hold the leg in place in certain positions. 

For example, to hold any kind of split or piked straddle without an external force like the floor or our hand to keep the leg in place requires the ability to pull the leg towards our bodies, closing the angle of the hip and compressing our leg. 

It’s also worth noting that for certain positions or to create specific shapes, we may not need to go to our full range of motion, so having the strength and control to deliberately choose how much we compress is incredibly useful too. Again, this comes with training this element more with a wide variety of drills and movements, making the strength and control that we develop as useful as possible.

3. The Bigger Skills

I view bigger skills as movements like press handstand, straight arm straddle inverts, kong vaults, V-sits, skin the cats… any number of bodyweight movements that require the ability to close the angle of the front of the hips while manoeuvring your body through the space around you in a specific way. 

Most of these skills can be muscled through and done with less than ideal technique if you don’t have the best compression strength. But the better your compression strength is, the more efficient these bigger skills become.

Take a straight arm invert.

If we can compress our legs against our bodies, our ankles and feet are placed behind our arms and shoulders, shifting the weight more proportionally across our upper body and helping to lift the hips and complete the movement. If we can’t compress, we’d essentially have to move through a straddle front lever to get to the top of our invert, which requires a hell of a lot more upper body strength. And if we can’t straight arm invert, we likely don’t have a straddle front lever. 

Making a movement more efficient is always worth prioritising.

Compression strength is a missing puzzle piece to a lot of movements. 

And for that reason, it’s important to train it in isolation, AND as part of full body movements. 

It’s one thing to create strength in those muscles, it’s another thing to be able to coordinate them at the same time as using other parts of the body. This is why “just adding leg lifts” is too simplistic. Sure it will help, and something is better than nothing. But to make it really effective it needs to be specific to the skills you’re training towards. 

So we come full circle to what I was talking about at the start of this post; I’ve been finding different and creative ways to build compression strength to keep training fun and interesting. I want there to be the option for it to feel less like “hard conditioning”, or just another “weakness” to add to the list of things to address, but instead turn it into something that can be trained as part of the whole body. And something that can be fun to train!

Do you train compression strength, and do you enjoy it? Are there any movements that you’re working towards that you need better compression strength for? I’d love to hear from you if you want to share this with me!