You’ve probably seen them in the mirror—those inward curves right below your hip bones and above your thighs. Maybe you’ve spent hours scrolling through Instagram or TikTok, watching influencers promise that a 10-minute "side booty" workout will erase them forever. But here is the honest truth that most fitness apps won't tell you: those indentations, known as trochanteric depressions, are a feature of your skeleton.
Stop trying to fix your bones.
The question of can I get rid of hip dips has become a massive obsession in the fitness world lately. It’s kinda wild because, for the longest time, nobody even noticed them. They weren't "a thing" until social media decided they were a flaw to be corrected. If you’re frustrated because your dips aren't disappearing despite all those fire hydrants and clamshells, there is a very scientific reason for that.
It’s about your pelvis. Specifically, it’s about the distance between your ilium (the crest of your hip) and the greater trochanter of your femur.
If that gap is wide, you’re going to have a visible dip. It doesn't matter if you have 5% body fat or 35% body fat. It doesn't matter if you can squat 300 pounds. Your skin and muscle simply follow the blueprint of the bone beneath them.
The Anatomy of the Dip
Let's get technical for a second, but not too boring. Your hip dip is located where the muscles—specifically the gluteus medius and gluteus minimus—cross over the hip joint. Everyone has these muscles. Everyone has these bones.
However, the prominence of the dip is determined by how your femur sits in your hip socket. Some people have a high pelvis, others have a wide pelvis, and some have a significant vertical distance between the hip bone and the leg bone. If you have a skeleton that is built this way, that "dip" is just the space where there isn't a bone pushing the skin outward.
Dr. Sandra Meyer, a sports medicine specialist, often points out that trying to "exercise away" a hip dip is like trying to exercise away your height. You can’t change the attachment points of your tendons.
Muscle can fill things out, sure. But muscle has a specific shape. The gluteus maximus—the big meaty part of your butt—lives mostly in the back. The gluteus medius, which is on the side, is a relatively flat, fan-shaped muscle. It’s not a "bulky" muscle that can puff out like a bicep to fill in a deep skeletal indentation.
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Fat Distribution and the "Shelf"
Fat also plays a role, though maybe not how you think. Some people find that as they lose weight, their hip dips become more prominent. This happens because the fat that was sitting in the "dip" area or sitting right above it on the "love handle" area disappears, revealing the skeletal structure underneath.
Conversely, if you carry more weight on your iliac crest (the top of the hip) and on your outer thighs (the "saddlebag" area), the dip in the middle looks deeper by comparison. It’s basically an optical illusion created by the peaks above and below it.
Can I Get Rid of Hip Dips With Targeted Workouts?
You’ll see a million "Hip Dip Destroyer" videos on YouTube. Honestly? Most of them are just good glute workouts that won't actually change the dip.
You can definitely strengthen the gluteus medius. Movements like lateral lunges, cable hip abductions, and weighted clamshells are great for hip stability. They help your knees stay healthy. They make you a stronger runner. They give you a "wider" look from the front if that’s your goal. But they won't "fill in" the dip completely because the muscle isn't positioned directly inside the indentation.
Think of it like a valley between two mountains. You can make the mountains (the hip bone and the thigh muscle) bigger, but the valley is still a valley.
I’ve talked to plenty of powerlifters who have massive legs and incredible glute development but still have deep hip dips. If elite athletes with world-class muscle mass have them, why are we expecting a 3-pound ankle weight to make them vanish?
The Role of Cosmetic Procedures
If you are absolutely dead-set on changing the silhouette, the only way to truly "get rid" of them is through medical intervention. This usually involves fat grafting (a Brazilian Butt Lift or BBL) or dermal fillers like Sculptra.
In a fat grafting procedure, a surgeon takes fat from somewhere else—like your stomach—and injects it directly into the depression. It works, but it’s surgery. It carries risks like fat embolism or infection.
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Sculptra is a biostimulatory filler that kicks off collagen production. It's less invasive than surgery, but it’s incredibly expensive because it takes a lot of vials to fill that area, and it’s not permanent. Most people realize after looking at the price tag that their hip dips aren't actually that big of a deal.
Why the Obsession Started
It’s all about the "BBL Era" of beauty standards. For the last decade, the trending aesthetic has been a perfectly round, shelf-like hip that curves outward without any interruptions.
But if you look at classical art or even vintage fitness magazines, hip dips were never seen as a flaw. They were just... hips. In fact, many people find them athletic-looking. They show the definition between the pelvic basket and the leg.
We’ve been conditioned to think any line that isn't a perfect curve is a failure of fitness. That's just not how biology works. Bodies have bumps. They have hinges. They have places where things attach.
What You Should Actually Focus On
If you want your hips to look their best, focus on overall lower body hypertrophy.
- Heavy Compound Movements: Squats, deadlifts, and Romanian deadlifts build the gluteus maximus, which gives the "booty" its shape from the side and back.
- Abduction Work: Use the hip abduction machine or cable side-kicks. This builds the glute medius and minimus, which provides a bit more "width" to the upper hip.
- Body Fat Acceptance: Understand that your body distributes fat based on genetics. You can't "spot reduce" fat from your love handles to make the dip look shallower.
I remember a client who spent six months doing nothing but side-lying leg raises. She was frustrated because her hip dips were still there. But when we looked at her progress photos, her entire lower body was tighter, her posture was better, and her back pain had vanished because her glutes were finally doing their job. She still had the dips, but she felt like a powerhouse.
Dealing with the Mental Aspect
It's weirdly hard to unsee something once you've decided it's a "problem."
You might find yourself checking every mirror or window reflection. You might compare yourself to a photoshopped image of a celebrity who had their hip dips edited out (yes, that happens constantly).
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A good trick is to look at photos of "fitspos" or athletes in candid, unposed settings. When people aren't twisting their spines or pushing their hips back to create a specific angle, you'll see those dips everywhere. They are a sign of a normal human skeleton.
Bella Hadid has them. Miley Cyrus has them. Most runway models have them because they have low body fat and wide pelvic structures. If the "beauty icons" of the world have them, the pressure for you to get rid of them is purely a marketing tactic to sell you tea, waist trainers, or workout programs.
Actionable Steps for a Better Silhouette
While the answer to can I get rid of hip dips is technically "no" in terms of changing your bone structure, you can certainly improve the way your lower body looks and functions.
- Prioritize Glute Medius Strength: Don't do it to fill the dip; do it for pelvic stability. Stronger hips mean less lower back pain and better knee alignment. Single-leg work like Bulgarian split squats is gold here.
- Adjust Your Wardrobe: If the dips bother you aesthetically, high-waisted leggings with thick compression fabric tend to smooth out the silhouette. Thicker fabrics like denim also mask the indentation more than thin, stretchy yoga pants.
- Stop the Lateral Obsession: Stop doing 500 reps of bodyweight side-kicks. It’s a waste of time. If you want to build muscle, you need resistance. Use bands, use cables, or use the machines at the gym.
- Check Your Posture: Sometimes, an anterior pelvic tilt (where your butt sticks out and your lower back arches excessively) can make the dip look more pronounced by shifting how the soft tissue sits over the bone. Strengthening your core can help neutralize this.
- Reframe the Goal: Instead of "erasing" a dip, aim for "developing" the leg. Well-developed quads and hamstrings create a balanced, powerful look that makes the hip dip look like just another muscle tie-in rather than a "hole" in your physique.
Ultimately, your hips are meant for moving, jumping, and stabilizing your entire upper body. They aren't just a shape to be molded into a 2D curve for a photo. When you start training for performance—trying to get that extra five pounds on the bar or running that extra mile—you'll likely find that you care a whole lot less about a small curve in your hip and a whole lot more about what your body can actually do.
The goal shouldn't be a body without lines; it should be a body that works. Those dips are just a part of the architecture that lets you move through the world. Accept the bone, build the muscle, and ignore the influencers selling "fixes" for things that aren't broken.
Next Steps for Your Fitness Routine
If you're looking to actually build a stronger lower body regardless of your bone structure, start by adding one dedicated "lateral" movement to your leg days—like a heavy cable hip abduction—and focus on progressive overload. Instead of chasing a change in your skeleton, track your strength gains over the next twelve weeks. You'll likely find that as your strength increases, your confidence in your body's shape follows suit, dips and all.