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“Feet hips-width apart.”
It is one of those cues you hear constantly in movement classes. Pilates. Barre. Yoga. Strength training. Fitness classes of all kinds. And yet I have a question:
How often do you actually think about the width of your hips?
Probably never. You get dressed. You walk around. You sit down. You stand up. You get into your car. You go about your day. At no point are you thinking, Wow, my hips are approximately this many inches wide today. However, put you in a fitness class and suddenly your teacher tells you to stand with your feet hips-width apart, and now you are expected to know exactly what that means. So you look down. You move your feet. You look at the person next to you. You move them again and now you're wondering whether your hips are apparently much wider or narrower than you thought they were.
Welcome to one of the great problems with movement cues:
The words can sound much more precise than they actually are.
“Hips-width apart” is useful.
But it is not a universal measurement.
And that matters, not because the cue is wrong, but because the reason behind the cue is usually more important than perfectly reproducing the distance.
There are several ways teachers might describe this position.
You may hear:
And depending on the teacher's training, the movement discipline, and the specific exercise, those instructions can produce slightly different positions. For example, in yoga, a narrower stance is often used in Mountain Pose, with approximately one fist between the feet. This creates a relationship between the heels under the sitz bones. In Pilates and barre, you will often see a little more space between the feet or knees, approximately two fists apart. This can create a bit more room through the back and establishes a relationship between the ankle bones and the outside of the hip bones. Neither of these is necessarily the definition of hips-width apart. They are ways of helping a person find a useful starting position, and that distinction is important. Because when we teach, we can accidentally turn a helpful cue into a rule.
One of the things I find fascinating about movement instruction is how often we use the body to measure the body. One fist, hand, foot, thumb's width, a hand's distance from the floor, or two fists between the knees. These are all incredibly practical teaching tools. They are also inherently approximate. Your hand is different from my hand. Your skeletal structure is different from mine. Your proportions are different and your body may even organize itself differently from one exercise to another depending on what the movement requires. So when I tell you to put your feet hips-width apart, I am not asking you to discover an objectively perfect measurement that has been hiding somewhere inside your pelvis. I am giving you a starting point. That starting point should help you find something. Maybe that is balance, stability, mobility or connection. It might be simply creating enough space for you to perform the movement well.
This is one of the reasons I love teaching teachers. A cue cannot always be separated from the movement it is accompanying. The same words can have different purposes depending on what you're doing. Consider standing in a basic position. You might want your feet relatively close together because you are looking for balance and a sense of midline organization. Move into a different exercise, and suddenly a slightly wider position may give you better stability. Or perhaps you need more room through the pelvis and lower back. The setup is not necessarily changing because someone has decided the first version was “wrong.”
It is changing because the movement has changed.
This is something new teachers sometimes struggle with. They learn a list of exercises. They learn the setup. They memorize the cue and then they feel as though they need to reproduce that setup identically every single time. But teaching movement is not quite that simple. The goal is not to create bodies that all look identical. The goal is to help people organize their bodies effectively for the task in front of them.
One of my favorite examples of this is the difference between a Roll Up and the Neck Pull. In a traditional Pilates Roll Up, the legs are together. That isn't simply because someone decided that Pilates exercises should look tidy. Bringing the legs together can create a strong sense of connection through the midline. The adductors, the muscles of the inner thigh, are involved. The pelvic floor can participate. The legs can feel connected to the center of the body. The position itself gives you tactile information. Your legs are touching. You can feel that relationship. You have a physical reminder of where your midline is. Now consider the Neck Pull. The legs are separated. And yet we still want connection. We still want control. We still want the trunk and pelvis to organize efficiently. We are asking the body to find some of the same principles without relying on the exact same tactile cue. That is a completely different setup. But it does not mean that one is connected and the other is disconnected. It means the strategy for creating connection has changed. That is a much more useful way to think about movement.
This is particularly important for people who are new to Pilates, barre, or yoga. You should not feel like you are failing because you don't immediately know what “hips-width apart” means. Also, teachers should not make their students feel like they are failing because their feet aren't separated by the exact same number of inches as everyone else's. Start somewhere. Then look, adjust, move, notice before making an informed decision based on what you feel. That is learning and honestly, that is much more valuable than simply memorizing a measurement. Because if you become dependent on the exact external measurement, you may have trouble adapting when your body changes, when the exercise changes, or when the environment changes.
But if you learn to recognize connection, stability, mobility, balance, and control, you have tools that travel with you.
This is another reason I don't love the idea that there is always one perfect setup. Your body is not exactly the same every day. Neither is the movement or the goal. Perhaps today you need a little more space or a narrower stance gives you more balance. Perhaps you are learning an exercise and need a very clear tactile reference. Even better would be that you are more experienced and can find the same connection without that reference. The setup can be a conversation with your body. That doesn't mean “anything goes.” There are absolutely times when alignment matters. There are times when a teacher needs to be specific because changing the position dramatically changes the mechanics of an exercise. But there is a huge difference between being precise about purpose and being precise simply for the sake of precision. I want teachers to know the difference and once they do, students to know that difference, too.
The next time your teacher says it, try something different. Don't immediately look down and start measuring. Instead, establish a reasonable starting position.
Then ask yourself:
Do I feel balanced?
Can I move well from here?
Do I feel stable?
Do I have the mobility I need?
Can I connect to the muscles and areas of the body the exercise is asking me to connect to?
Those questions will often tell you much more than whether you can fit exactly one or two fists between your feet. And if you're teaching, these are the questions you can begin teaching your clients to ask themselves.
Instead of:
“Am I standing exactly the right distance apart?”
They begin to think:
“Why are we standing this way?”
That is a much more sophisticated mover.
“Hips-width apart” is not really about the width of your hips. It is about creating a useful relationship between your feet, ankles, pelvis, spine, and the movement you're about to perform. Sometimes that relationship is narrower or wider. Sometimes the feet are together or are separated and sometimes the most important thing is not the distance at all. It is what that distance allows you to accomplish. So the next time you hear “hips-width apart,” don't freak out. Don't try to literally match the width of your hip bones with the width of your feet. Don't spend the next five minutes staring down at your ankles. Set yourself up. Breathe. Move. Pay attention. And find the position where you can create the connection, stability, or mobility the movement needs. Because each movement may need a different setup. One of the most important things I can teach a new teacher:
The cue is not the goal.
The cue is the tool that helps you find the goal.