Exercise and hip dips: the answer fitness content won't give

Right muscle, wrong location.

The muscle every 'fix your hip dips' programme targets — gluteus medius — sits largely above and behind the visible hollow, under fascia that keeps its bulk from projecting where the dip is. Building it improves strength, stability, and overall shape (genuinely worth doing), but it cannot place volume into a concavity created by where your femur meets your pelvis. Twelve more weeks won't change the postcode of a muscle.

The crueller twist: serious training often makes dips more visible — leanness unveils the skeleton, and built glutes above deepen the contrast. Your progress frames the dip. Nothing failed; geometry was never a fitness outcome.

• Keep training — for strength, health and every other reason. Just not for dip-erasure.
• Don't gain weight to soften them — uncontrollable, everywhere, and a health trade for a contour.
• Know the honest fix — if the contour truly bothers you, volume placed exactly in the hollow (your own fat) addresses the actual cause.
• Or make peace with it — a respected outcome of understanding all of the above.