Are You Hip? How's Your Side Leg Lift?

Often during Essentrics classes, I have to cut myself off from talking. If I didn’t, the class would stop and we’d have an anatomy lesson instead! There are so many wonderful benefits for your body when you do Essentrics, and I love to share the details with my students. Partly to educate them, and partly so they understand why we do things the way we do in Essentrics. 

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Take side leg lifts, for example. My students “love to hate” these powerful exercises. They know I’ll keep on top of them to: “pull out, pull out, pull out”; “rotate in the hip”; “roll the hip forward to  activate at the abductor muscle group”; etc. You get my drift. It’s easy to have your form slip during the side leg lift sequence. After all, your brain wants your body to take the path of least resistance. Which means using large muscles to move instead of smaller stabilizer muscles.

With side leg lifts, we want to stretch and strengthen all 17 muscles that work hip movement.* That’s right, 17 muscles for that one joint. Take a look at the images below to see the complexity of the muscles that act on the hip joint.

Muscles of the Hip

Anterior Hip Muscles, Image Source: By Beth ohara - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=545389

Posterior Hip Muscles, Image Source: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=545381

Posterior Hip Muscles #2, Image Source: CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=545378

The hip joint is a ball-and-socket joint: the head of the femur (aka the thigh bone) is a ball that sits in the acetabulum (aka the hip socket on the pelvis) to form the hip joint. Because of this unique structure - the shoulder joint is the only other ball-and-socket joint in your body - the leg can move in many different ways:

forward - flexion
backward - extension
out to the side - abduction
back towards the torso - adduction
circular/semi-circular movement - rotation

Now that the anatomy lesson is over, let’s revisit side leg lifts.

Why Do We Do Side Leg Lifts?

1. Decompress the hip joint - which relieves hip pain, increases flexibility and range of motion and improves standing posture
2. Stretch and strengthen all the muscles of the hip - flexors, extensors, rotators, abductors, adductors
3. Strengthen the core
4. Increase speed of an athlete - think juke moves, you know, faking out a tackler in football

In order to decompress the joint, we need to constantly pull out - pull the leg away from the body, while simultaneously pulling the torso in the opposite direction. Think medieval torture rack and, don’t worry, you’ll thank me later when your hips feel more unlocked and free. 

When all of these muscles are strong and flexible, you’re less likely to sink into your hips when you’re standing. That’s a good thing for improving your standing posture. As you pull the pelvis in the opposite direction of the leg, you are also strengthening your core muscles, further improving your posture.​

​You don’t need to be a football player - or an athlete at all - to want strong abductor muscles. Remember - they’re the ones that are responsible for moving your leg out to the side, away from your body. When all of your muscles are strong and doing their job, your joints enjoy a level of freedom and mobility that allows you to move fluidly and pain-free.

Image Source: pixabay.com

Image Source: pixabay.com

​You’re only as strong as your weakest muscle. And what happens when the other muscles in that chain wear out from compensating for the weak one? The system breaks down, that's what. Rebalance your body with Essentrics. Your entire body will thank you for it.

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References:
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muscles_of_the_hip