Hip Dips Are Bone—But Here's What You CAN Actually Build

You've noticed the indent. The dip between your hip bone and the top of your thigh. The "violin hips" that create a curve inward where you wish there was a smooth line.

You've searched "how to fix hip dips." You've found workouts promising to fill them in. You've done the fire hydrants, the clamshells, the lying leg raises. Hundreds of reps. Thousands of reps.

Your hip dips look exactly the same.

Here's what the fitness influencers selling you "hip dip workouts" won't tell you: Hip dips are bone structure. They're created by the shape of your skeleton. And you cannot exercise away your bones.

But before you despair, there's more to this story.

What Hip Dips Actually Are

Let's get anatomical for a moment.

The area you're looking at—the indent below your hip bone—is determined by:

The width of your pelvis. Your hip bones (the iliac crest) create the widest point of your hips.

The angle of your femur. Your thigh bone connects to your pelvis at a specific angle, determined by genetics. This angle varies significantly between individuals.

The position of your greater trochanter. This is the bony bump at the top of your femur—you can feel it if you press on the outside of your hip. It's the attachment point for your glute muscles.

The "dip" happens in the space between your iliac crest (hip bone) and your greater trochanter (thigh bone). If these structures are spaced a certain way, you have a visible dip. If they're positioned differently, you don't.

This is skeletal anatomy, not fat or muscle. The dip isn't empty space waiting to be filled with muscle. It's the natural contour created by your bone placement.

A woman came to me frustrated after six months of dedicated "hip dip workouts." She'd been doing the exercises multiple times per week, progressively adding resistance.

"Why aren't they filling in?" she asked. "I've built so much muscle."

She had built muscle. Her glutes were significantly stronger. But her hip dips looked identical because the dip was never about missing muscle—it was about where her bones are located.

The Lie Fitness Influencers Sell

Let's be honest about what's happening online.

Fitness influencers discovered that women feel insecure about hip dips. Insecurity drives engagement. Engagement drives revenue.

So they created "hip dip workouts"—exercises that supposedly target and fill in the dip. They post before-and-after photos showing dramatic improvements. They promise that with dedication, you can achieve smooth, round hips.

The photos are manipulated. Lighting, angles, posing, and sometimes Photoshop create the appearance of filled-in hip dips. In the "before" shot, they stand in unflattering light with relaxed posture. In the "after," they twist, flex, adjust lighting, and pose specifically to minimize the dip's appearance.

The exercises don't target the "dip." There is no muscle in the dip itself. The dip is the absence of tissue over bone. The exercises they prescribe work the glute medius—which is valuable—but won't and can't fill in the space between your pelvis and femur.

The results are unachievable. If someone's hip dips truly "disappeared," they either had very minimal dips to begin with, gained significant fat in the area (which some women do with weight gain), or the photos are manipulated.

The pattern I see constantly: Women do these workouts religiously, see no change, and feel like failures. They assume they're not working hard enough. They add more exercises, more reps, more sessions. The hip dips remain, and now they've added shame to the frustration.

You didn't fail. You were sold something that doesn't exist.

Coach's Note: Any influencer promising to eliminate hip dips through exercise is either uninformed or deliberately lying. The anatomy doesn't support the claim. Be skeptical of anyone selling you a solution to a "problem" that isn't actually a problem.

What You CAN Control

Now for the empowering part: You can't eliminate hip dips, but you can significantly impact the overall appearance of your hip-to-thigh region.

Build Your Glute Medius

Your glute medius is the muscle on the side of your hip, just below where hip dips occur. While it won't fill the dip itself, a well-developed glute medius creates mass and shape in the area directly below it.

Think of it this way: You can't fill in the dip, but you can build up what's around it. A larger glute medius creates a rounder, fuller appearance overall—making the dip less prominent in the visual landscape of your body.

Effective glute medius exercises:

• Side-lying hip abductions (with weight)
• Cable hip abductions
• Banded walks
• Single-leg hip thrusts (targets glute medius more than bilateral)

The key is progressive overload. Those bodyweight fire hydrants everyone prescribes? They're not challenging enough to build significant muscle. You need resistance.

Build Your Glute Maximus

A larger glute maximus—the main mass of your butt—creates a rounder overall appearance that can make hip dips less noticeable proportionally.

When your glutes are flat and underdeveloped, hip dips stand out more prominently. When your glutes are full and round, the eye is drawn to the overall shape rather than the small indentation.

Heavy hip thrusts, Romanian deadlifts, and deep squats build glute maximus mass.

Build Your Outer Thigh

Your vastus lateralis—the outer portion of your quadriceps—sits below and adjacent to where hip dips occur. Developing this muscle can fill out the area below the dip.

Exercises like leg presses with feet narrow and lunges with a slight lean can emphasize outer quad development.

The Expectation Adjustment

Part of addressing hip dips is adjusting what you're aiming for.

You will not achieve smooth, curved hips if your bone structure creates a dip. Full stop. No workout will override your skeleton. Accepting this isn't giving up—it's being realistic so you can focus energy on achievable goals.

You can achieve stronger, more developed glutes and hips that look athletic and powerful. This is something you control. Building muscle in this area improves function, improves proportions, and creates a body you can feel proud of—dip and all.

You can achieve proportion that minimizes the visual impact of the dip. A well-developed lower body with glute mass, quad development, and hamstring shape creates an overall aesthetic that doesn't draw attention to one small indentation.

The women who feel best about their bodies aren't the ones who achieved physical perfection. They're the ones who maximized what they could control and made peace with what they couldn't.

The Body That Actually Looks Good

Here's what I've observed over years of training women:

The women who look amazing aren't the ones without hip dips. They're the ones with developed, strong lower bodies that happen to have hip dips.

A strong, muscular lower body with hip dips looks athletic, healthy, and attractive. It looks like a body that can do things—squat heavy, run fast, move powerfully.

A underdeveloped lower body without hip dips often looks... undefined. Flat. Lacking the shape and presence that muscle creates.

Would you rather have smooth hips on a flat, shapeless lower body? Or hip dips on a round, muscular, powerful one?

The second option is the one you can actually achieve. And it's the one that turns heads—not because it matches some arbitrary ideal, but because it radiates strength.

The Woman Who Stopped Fighting

A client in her late 20s had been obsessing over her hip dips for years. She'd done every workout, tried every promise. She'd even researched surgical options.

When we started working together, I was honest with her: I couldn't eliminate her hip dips. But I could help her build a lower body she'd be proud of.

We trained hard. Heavy hip thrusts. Progressive glute work. Quad development. Real strength training, not targeted "fix" exercises.

Six months later, her hip dips looked... exactly the same. They were still there. But her entire lower body had transformed. Her glutes were round and full. Her legs had shape and definition. She looked powerful.

"I still have hip dips," she told me. "But I also have a great ass. Somehow I don't care about the dips anymore."

That's the real transformation. Not changing a skeletal structure that can't be changed—but building a body so impressive that one small anatomical variation becomes irrelevant.

The Acceptance That Isn't Giving Up

Let me be clear: Accepting that you can't eliminate hip dips isn't giving up. It's being strategic.

You have limited time and energy for fitness. Spending it chasing an impossible goal—filling in a bony space through exercise—is wasted effort that could be directed toward achievable goals that actually improve your body and your life.

Redirect that energy toward:

• Building glute mass that creates the shape you want
• Developing lower body strength that improves function
• Creating proportions that you find aesthetically pleasing
• Building a body you feel powerful in, regardless of one detail

Hip dips weren't a concern for anyone until the internet decided they should be. They're a normal anatomical feature that most women have. The fitness industry created the insecurity so they could sell you the solution.

Don't buy it. Don't chase it. Build the muscle around it, and let the dips be what they've always been: a non-issue that only exists because someone convinced you it was a problem.

If you're ready to build a powerful lower body instead of chasing fixes that don't exist, that's exactly what the Pretty Strong method is designed for →. We build glutes, develop proportion, and create the strong body you're imagining—working with your structure, not against it.