Use Your Backside Instead of Your Head
By Valerie Wolf
In the last part of any endurance race, we greatly rely on the lateral hip strength to carry us through. Having strong glutes and lateral hip muscles is imperative for injury prevention and increasing performance for the endurance athlete, especially when the going gets tough.
Running yields the highest frequency of repetitive, single leg stance than any other activity.
The lateral hip muscles, specifically gluteus medius, minimus, piriformis, and other smaller lateral rotators are activated whenever the athlete is on one foot.
Strengthening the lateral hip must go beyond just running to gain use of these muscles in a repetitive manner. Below are a few examples of exercises that will activate the lateral hip muscles to help give you that competitive edge.
- BAND WALKING: Tie a theraband into a circle. Put your feet through the band, placing band at your ankles. Standing, squat down, feet shoulder width apart, butt sitting back, and proceed to walk forward for 20 yards. Next walk sideways, performing this on each side, walking 20 yards.
- SIDELYING CLAM: Lie on your side, with knees bent. Keeping feet together, open up the top leg towards the ceiling, envisioning a clam shell opening. Try to not roll back on the hips. Keep them stacked on top of one another, only moving the leg. Perform 2 sets of 20 repetitions.
- SKIERS: Start with feet shoulder width apart, squatted down. Push off of your right leg, jumping sideways to the left, landing onto your left leg, with left knee bent. Reverse this and land back on right leg. Repeat 2 sets of 5 repetitions each leg. Back and forth is one.
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Valerie Wolf, MS, LAT, ATC, CPT is an athletic trainer and certified personal trainer at The Athletic Performance Center in Raleigh. For more information on their services, visit the APC online atwww.apcraleigh.com or www.apccary.com.
