When you think about strengthening your glutes, you probably think of exercises like squats, deadlifts, bridges, and hip thrusts. These are all excellent exercises for building strength around the hips and lower body. But there is another part of your hip that deserves attention, especially as we get older: the muscles on the outside of your hip.
The gluteus medius and gluteus minimus play an important role in controlling your pelvis and hip when you’re standing on one leg. And whether you realize it or not, you’re on one leg constantly throughout the day. Every step you take requires you to shift your weight from one leg to the other, which means your body needs to control that transition efficiently.
That same control becomes important when you climb stairs, step over an obstacle, walk on uneven ground, run, change direction, or catch yourself when you lose your balance.
Strong hips aren’t just about how much you can lift. They’re also about how well you can control your body while you move.
Your Outside Hip Muscles Do More Than You Think
When people think about balance, they often think about standing on one foot or having a good inner ear. While our balance system is certainly complex and involves vision, the vestibular system, the brain, and our sensory systems, strength and physical control are also important pieces of the equation.
Your body needs to have enough strength and coordination to respond when your center of gravity shifts.
That’s why balance isn’t simply something you either have or don’t have. It is a physical skill that can be challenged and trained.
This is also why strength training becomes increasingly important as we age. Maintaining muscle isn’t only about looking strong or lifting heavier weights. It helps preserve the physical capacity we need to move through everyday life with confidence.
What Does the Research Show?
A recent 2026 study looked at 590 adults over the age of 65 who had previously experienced a hip fracture. Researchers used CT imaging to examine the muscles around the hip, including the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus, and looked at how muscle density related to fall-related outcomes.
The researchers found that greater muscle density in the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus was independently associated with lower odds of fear of falling.
This is an interesting finding because muscle density tells us something different from simply looking at the size of a muscle. Muscle quality can reflect the amount of functional muscle relative to fat within the tissue.
It’s important to be careful about what this study does—and does not—tell us. It does not prove that strengthening your gluteus medius will prevent you from falling, and it does not mean that one muscle is more important than all the others.
Instead, it adds to a growing body of evidence reminding us that maintaining muscle quality and strength around the hip matters as we age.
Fall Prevention Starts Before You Fall
When people hear the words fall prevention, they often picture someone who is already having significant balance problems. But I think we should change the way we approach this.
Why wait until you’re falling to start training your balance and strength?
You don’t have to be 80 years old to benefit from single-leg strength, lateral hip control, and balance training. In fact, these are qualities worth developing throughout adulthood so that you have a larger reserve of strength and physical capacity as you get older.
Think about it like saving money for retirement. You don’t wait until retirement to start saving. You build that reserve over time.
Your physical capacity works in a similar way.
The stronger and more capable you are today, the more reserve you have when life inevitably becomes more challenging.
What If You Already Have Knee Arthritis?
Having osteoarthritis doesn’t automatically mean you need to avoid impact forever.
Research in people who already have hip or knee osteoarthritis has also challenged the idea that higher-impact activity is necessarily harmful to the joints.
A 2026 study of more than 17,000 people with hip or knee osteoarthritis found that participation in higher-impact physical activity was associated with lower odds of hip replacement over the following year. The study did not find the same association with knee replacement.
Importantly, this was an observational study, so it cannot prove that high-impact exercise prevents joint replacement.
But it does reinforce an important concept:
Osteoarthritis does not automatically mean “stop moving.”
Your exercise program should consider your symptoms, your current strength and capacity, your goals, and how your body responds to increasing load.
What Does Training Your Hips Actually Look Like?
You don’t need to spend an entire workout isolating your gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. In fact, I don’t think that’s the best way to approach it.
Your hips need to be strong in many different positions and under different types of load.
Traditional strength exercises such as squats, deadlifts, bridges, and hip thrusts can help build overall strength and muscle. But it’s also useful to incorporate exercises that challenge your ability to control your body on one leg and in different directions.
Depending on your goals and current abilities, that might include:
- Single-leg squats or sit-to-stands
- Step-ups and step-downs
- Lateral step-downs
- Single-leg deadlifts
- Lateral lunges
- Side-stepping or band walks
- Carries with an offset load
- Single-leg balance exercises
- Hiking and other uneven-surface activities
The specific exercise matters less than the principle behind it: your body should be exposed to different positions, directions, and demands.
Strong Doesn't Just Mean “How Much Can You Lift?”
This is an important distinction.
You can have a strong squat and still struggle with single-leg control. You can deadlift a significant amount of weight but feel unstable when you step off a curb. You can have strong glutes and still need to work on your balance, coordination, or ability to control your body when you’re moving quickly.
That’s because strength is only one part of physical capacity.
We also need to be able to use that strength.
Life rarely happens in a perfectly symmetrical position with both feet planted on the ground. We walk, turn, reach, step over things, carry bags, climb stairs, change directions, and react to unexpected situations.
Your training should prepare you for those demands.
This Isn't Just About Preventing Falls
One of the biggest misconceptions about fall-prevention training is that it is only relevant for people who are already older or unsteady.
That’s not how I see it.
Strong lateral hips, good single-leg control, and balance are valuable for anyone who wants to stay active throughout life. They’re important for running, hiking, pickleball, tennis, golf, skiing, traveling, strength training, and simply feeling confident walking on uneven surfaces.
If you’re an active adult in your 40s, 50s, or 60s, this is a great time to start paying attention to these qualities—not because you’re “old,” but because you want to stay capable.
And if you’re already experiencing balance changes, weakness, or a fear of falling, that’s even more reason to address it rather than simply accepting it as a normal part of aging.
Don't Wait Until You Need Balance to Train Balance
One of the things I want patients to understand is that getting older doesn’t mean you have to stop challenging your body. In many ways, maintaining your strength and physical capacity becomes even more important as the years go by.
You don’t have to wait until you feel weak to start strength training. You don’t have to wait until you fall to work on your balance. And you don’t have to wait until you lose confidence in your favorite activities to start building your capacity.
Train for the life you want to continue living.
That might mean lifting weights, walking longer distances, practicing single-leg exercises, playing a sport, hiking, or simply challenging yourself to move in ways that feel a little different from your normal routine.
The goal isn’t to eliminate every physical challenge.
The goal is to make your body increasingly capable of handling them.
At Soma Vita, We Look Beyond One Muscle or One Exercise
At Soma Vita Physio & Wellness, we don’t look at strength as simply how much weight you can lift. We look at how your body functions as a whole—how you move, how you control movement, how you respond to load, how you balance, and whether your current physical capacity matches the demands of the life you want to live.
Sometimes that means addressing pain. Sometimes it means rebuilding strength after an injury. And sometimes it means being proactive and building capacity before something becomes a problem.
Our goal isn’t just to help you get stronger. It’s to help you stay strong enough to keep doing what you love.
Because the best kind of strength is the kind that gives you more confidence, more independence, and more options.
Want to Build Strength, Balance & Confidence?
If you’ve noticed changes in your balance, strength, or confidence with movement—or you simply want to be proactive about maintaining your physical capacity as you age—we’d love to help.
A physical therapy evaluation can help identify where your current strengths and limitations are and give you a plan that is specific to your body, your goals, and the activities you want to continue doing.
Book a Discovery Call with Soma Vita Physio & Wellness
Let’s talk about what you’re noticing, what you want to keep doing, and whether individualized physical therapy is the right next step for you.
You don’t have to wait for your body to lose capacity before you start building it.
Stay Connected With Soma Vita
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If you want to learn more about staying strong, moving well, and maintaining the physical capacity to do the things you love, come follow along.
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Research References
- Ge Y, Li R, Tao X, et al. Gluteal muscle density, but not size, is independently associated with fall risk in older adults with hip fractures: A cross-sectional study using opportunistic CT imaging. Maturitas. 2026;211:108975.
- Association of Gluteus Medius and Minimus Muscle Atrophy and Fall-Related Hip Fracture in Older Individuals Using Computed Tomography.
- Muscle density discriminates hip fracture better than computed tomography X-ray absorptiometry hip areal bone mineral density. Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle. 2020.
