How to update hitArea of a sprite

Hy everyone, 

My question is about the hitArea of a sprite. First of all I am not quite sure if I understood the definition correctly, so I would really appreciate a clear explanation about it. 

What I want to do is: I have sprites in my game and I would test collision between them, but the sprite's width and height is not perfectly accurate to its 'actual appearance' so I would reduce the hitArea to improve my collision detection algorithm (but sometimes setting the hitArea is making it worse than using just the regular .getBounds() function).

This is how I did it for the first time but collision didn't occur.

let player = new PIXI.Sprite(texture); 
player.position.set(75, app.stage.view.height / 2);
player.anchor.set(0.5);

player.hitArea = new PIXI.Rectangle(player.x, player.y, 60, 20);

Later I found out that it is because the enemy that I am checking the collision against, is not being compared to my player object, but the initial coordinates of the PIXI.Rectangle that I use to modify hitArea with.

I have found out that if I want to compare the player.hitArea of the current position of my player object to enemy.getBounds(), in my game loop I update the hitArea of player like: 

app.ticker.add( () =>{
player.x += player.velocityX;
player.y += player.velocityY;
player.hitArea = new PIXI.Rectangle(player.x, player.y, 75, 85);
};

 I feel like this is a poor solution that I have came up with. Is there a better way of always updating hitArea coordinates to the player object's current coordinates?