Best Exercise You Could Ever Do: Hip Bridge & Lateral Leg Swing
So after spending the last few weeks in a whirlwind of traveling to Calgary twice, teaching 3 day courses twice, taking a major exam, as well as training my own clients and trying to get in some workouts of my own, yesterday hit and when I had a few hours to myself without clients or anything else, I kinda crashed. I'll admit it, I had a little snooze at my desk for a few minutes. I find I can go pretty full tilt for a few weeks, but then I need a little "Me Time" as Tony Gentilcore puts it. That being said, this weekend I'm planning on bumming around the house as much as possible, doing some work in the yard, sleeping in as much as possible, and essentially decompressing as much as possible.That being said, I've still been getting my ass in gear a few times a week and trying to work on keeping myself strong and as fit as possible so I don't wind up getting sick or throwing my back out. One of the important things a lot of people don't seem to realize is that training stress and life stress go hand in hand when it comes to the potential of overtraining, and in times where you're running on fumes, hard workouts can push you over the edge much easier than if everything is hunky-dory and full of happiness and sunshine and puppydog kisses.
Since I've been hitting it hard this past month, the workouts have been more restorative in nature, which means that pulling epic amounts of steel off the floor just ain't happening. I'm planning to get back to it next week, but in the meantime I'm doing a lot of mobility, core stability, and fun low-load exercises, kind of like todays bag of fantasticalness.
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What the hell is that?
It's half posterior chain strength, half hip flexibility, half "Hey Brah, what the sweet snappin crap does that work? Like, you're core or something?"
This is one of those movements that does so much, you almost think it's doing nothing. But then, like a ninja out of the mist, it creeps up on you and makes you wish for the sweet release of death. Maybe a bit melodramatic, but not too far off.
Let's start with the stabilizing leg, in this case the right leg. The glutes, hamstrings and low back all fire to drive the hip up, and as anyone can tell you a single leg bridge can be pretty challenging. The swing leg is where all the action is. Bringing the leg out to the side causes the adductor group into play, which is awesome because how many people actually work their adductors? Probably as many people who routinely watch The Marriage Ref. Top it all off with the fact that the abdomen is working hard to resist against rotation as the leg swings sideways, and you have a compound hip strengthening, mobilizing, and core stabilizing thingamajig that makes you not only look cool, but makes all the ladies watch you intently and wonder (sometimes aloud) what else you could do with your hips.
For those of you with no imagination on what that may be, here's a picture of two lobsters involved in a knife fight. ENJOY!
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