This is a single leg hip extension strengthening exercise. Lie down on your back, place your heels on an exercise bench or Plyo Box and bend both knees to 90 degrees. Raise the non-target leg off the ground into 90 degrees hip flexion. Keep the target leg’s heel planted and drive it downwards to raise the pelvis off the ground. Keep the spine neutral by bracing the core prior to lifting up the pelvis.
Banded side kicks train the muscles that abduct (moves apart) your thighs, like your gluteus medius and parts of gluteus maximus.
The seated hip abduction is a targeted exercise that strengthens and stabilizes the outer hip muscles and improves overall lower body strength.
The setup is the same as with a normal Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat, except rather than resting your back leg on top of a bench, you press it hard into a wall behind you, effectively activating the glutes and hamstrings on the rear leg and placing more stress onto the posterior chain.
This exercise is a deceptively challenging exercise to help activate the often pesky Glute Medius. Strengthening this muscle will assist with keeping your pelvis aligned. It is quite often used for eliminating knee and back pain as when the muscle is weak, it causes the hips to cock out to the side which puts the lower back into play and also can put the knee out of optimum biomechanical alignment. You will feel the burn on this one!
Getting our glutes to work can sometimes be tricky work. This exercise focuses on extending the hip so you can give the glutes a good squeeze. By going single leg, it means there is more weight for the glute to lift.
To make this exercise a touch easier, you can cross your floating legs ankle across your working legs knee.
To make it more challenging you can place a small weight across your hips (gentlemen – watch your bits!).
I love how many people LOVE to hate this exercise.. even though they know how effective it is for hip stabilisation! It’s important that you keep your back nice and straight and that you don’t fish for the ground by compromising your neutral spine in order to reach for the ground. If you do this side on to a mirror, ensure that your working leg is closest to the mirror. That way, if you see your non working glute in the mirror, it means you have lost form. Hide that glute and keep your hips square!
If you are in your 30’s and above.. you might remember a TV commercial for product called the Stable Table? The tray that had a pillow underneath so that you could balance things better on the tray? It was AWESOME. But anyway.
This exercise is named after that universe altering product as when you sit down into what is basically a one legged squat, your lap should be level enough so that you could rest your stable table on it!
Some tips on this one!
Make sure your knee does not collapse in and does not track forward.
