Hip Dips: What They Are and Why You Can't 'Fix' Them
Here is the straight answer. Hip dips are normal anatomy. They are the slight inward curve where your hip bone meets your thigh, and they come from the shape of your skeleton, not from fat or being out of shape.
If you searched hip dips, you have probably already been told, somewhere, that they are a flaw to erase. They are not. The inward curve along the side of your hip is one of the most normal shapes a human body has, and most of what gets sold to "fix" it is built on a misunderstanding of where it comes from.
So let me say this plainly before anything else. There is nothing wrong with your body. Hip dips are not damage, not a sign of neglect, and not something you failed to prevent. They are bone shape. Once you understand that, the panic tends to fall away, and the question changes from "how do I get rid of them" to "what, if anything, do I actually want to do here."
What hip dips actually are (anatomy, not fat)
Stand in front of a mirror and look at the side of your lower body. You may notice a small inward curve just below the widest part of your hip, before the line continues down your thigh. That curve is the hip dip, sometimes called violin hips or trochanteric depression.
It sits between two bony landmarks. At the top is your iliac crest, the upper edge of your pelvis. Below it is the greater trochanter, the bony knob at the top of your thigh bone (the femur) that you can feel on the outside of your hip. The space between these two points is not filled out by bone, so the soft tissue dips inward there. That inward line is the hip dip.
This is the part people miss: the dip is set by where your bones are, not by how much fat sits over them. The width of your pelvis and the distance between your iliac crest and your greater trochanter decide how pronounced the curve is. That is anatomy you were born with, the same way your shoulder width or your wrist size is.
Why almost everyone has them
Hip dips are common across body types. Lean people have them. Muscular and athletic people have them. People at higher body weights have them. They show up because they come from skeletal structure, and skeletal structure varies from person to person without meaning anything about health or fitness.
The reason it feels like only some people "have" hip dips is mostly about how visible they are, and that depends on a few things you did not choose. How wide your pelvis is. How your thigh bone connects. How and where your body stores fat and builds muscle. Two people at the same weight and fitness level can have very different looking hips purely because of bone geometry.
The reason it feels like a problem at all is newer. The term got popular online, and once a normal body feature has a name and a hashtag, it starts to read like a condition. It is not. If anything, the honest framing is the opposite: a feature this common is, by definition, normal.
Can you get rid of hip dips?
No, not the structure itself. This is the honest answer, and I would rather give it to you straight than sell you a routine that quietly cannot deliver. Because hip dips come from your bones, you cannot diet them away and you cannot train them away. There is no exercise that reshapes your pelvis and no meal plan that moves your greater trochanter.
What you can change is how visible the dip looks. Two levers matter. The first is glute muscle: building the muscles around the hip can fill the area out somewhat and soften the line. The second is overall body composition, since the amount and distribution of fat over the area changes the contour. Neither removes the dip, and neither works for everyone, because bone is still doing most of the talking.
So if a product or program promises to "erase" hip dips, treat that as a sign it does not understand the anatomy. The realistic goal is shape, not removal. And whether you pursue even that is entirely up to you, not something you owe anyone.
The exercises that genuinely change the look
If you do want to work on the shape, the useful target is the gluteal muscles, especially the gluteus medius on the side of the hip near the dip. Building muscle there can soften how pronounced the curve looks. To be clear about what these do: they change shape, they do not remove the dip.
- Side-lying hip abduction: lie on your side and lift the top leg up and slightly back. This targets the gluteus medius directly, which is the muscle closest to the dip.
- Hip thrusts and glute bridges: the strongest builders for overall glute size, which adds fullness around the hip area.
- Standing cable or band abduction: moving the leg out to the side against resistance, again loading the side-glute.
- Curtsy lunges and lateral lunges: work the glutes through a sideways movement pattern that hits the area.
- Clamshells and banded walks: simple gluteus medius work you can do anywhere, good as warm-up or finishers.
Done consistently over months, this kind of training can change how your hips look. It will not give you a perfectly straight line from hip to thigh, because that line is not yours to give. And that is fine. You are training for strength and shape, not to fix a defect, because there is no defect.
Eat well without the guesswork.
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Get The 711 Diet Protocol →If you came here from worry, it is worth separating two different questions that often get tangled. Whether a body is healthy is a real question. Whether it has hip dips is not, because that is just shape. For broader body-composition topics, you might find our guide on the spot reduction myth useful, since it explains why you cannot choose where fat comes off. Related reading: how to lose lower belly overhang and how much weight you can lose in a month.
The real takeaway: they are normal
Hip dips are skeletal structure. Almost everyone has them to some degree, including people who look lean, fit and strong. You cannot diet or exercise away the underlying shape, because it is bone, and the programs that promise otherwise are selling against your own anatomy.
You can build glute muscle and change body composition if you want to influence how visible the dip is. But you do not have to want that. The most accurate thing I can tell you as a physician is that hip dips are a normal feature of a normal body, and they were never a problem that needed solving.
What causes hip dips?
Your skeleton, mainly the width of your pelvis and where the top of your thigh bone sits relative to your hip bone. The inward curve between them is the dip. It is bone shape, not fat and not poor fitness.
Can you get rid of hip dips?
No, not the underlying structure, because it is set by your bones. You can change how visible the dip looks by building glute muscle and changing body composition, but the dip itself stays.
Do hip dips mean you are out of shape?
No. Lean, muscular and athletic people have hip dips too, because they come from skeletal structure. They are not a sign of being overweight or out of shape, and almost everyone has them.