What is a bridge?
Laying on your back, feet flat and pushing the hips toward the ceiling. The exercise emphasized the posterior chain (hamstrings, and glutes) and when performed correctly, enables the core and low back muscles. To engage the core and low back muscles we perform a “posterior pelvic tilt”. This tilt is performed with you laying on your back, feet flat and knees bent and trying to “smash” the small of your low back to the floor. Through the entirety of the exercise you will be performing hip extension, low back extension and a posterior pelvic tilt.
What are the benefits of a bridge?
The majority of the day we are sitting in a hip flexed position with our core “turned off” and in a position where it does not need to do a lot of work. Bridging is a simple exercise that will assist in recruiting muscles to push the hips forward to combat the tightness of the hip flexor muscles while also engaging in deep core muscles (internal obliques, external obliques and transversus abdominal mm) that can assist in reducing low back or anterior hip pain!
Modifications and variations when you’ve mastered the bridge:
When the bridge becomes a solid movement where the hips are able to stay even, and you’ve mastered the movement by varying speeds of slow and fast we can then progress to a few variations to keep the movement targeted to your performance level. These include:
1) Mini marches
2) Walk feet closer to your body and onto toes
3) Walk feet away from body and onto the heels
4) Single leg kickout: Keep hips even!
Now here is the fun part: Attempt all sets of bridges x25 regular speed, x30 quick, then x15 slow. To further increase the difficulty, add an elastic band around the knees or place feet on unsteady surface.
