Exercise: Reciprocal Side Step

An easy way to upgrade a common exercise for hip abductor weakness. Just rotate and reach toward the leading leg.

This is my @posturalrestoration influenced @mjmatc immitation. Michael does a wonderful job of taking complex details and bringing them to everyday exercises we all can do.

From the PRI perspective, the flexed posture allows for a better opportunity to achieve a ZOA. The reach drives thorax rotation and facilitates reciprocal airflow. It's creating an optimal sagittal plane posture and using a transverse plane motion to facilitate a frontal plane movement (hip abduction).

Or from a sling/anatomy train perspective it drives the lateral line with the spiral line.

Or if you prefer Vleeming, the reach helps to drive the posterior sling (along with the lateral and frontal).

Or it uses thorax rotation to create a contralateral external rotation moment at the hip, further activating the posterior fibers of the glute med and inhibiting the TFL.

Or from a gait perspective it mimics the reciprocal pattern (consider the lead leg the "swing" leg).

Or it offers a different context that allows for novel interoceptive awareness.

Or as @chrisjohnsonpt has pointed out, it helps to avoid a compensatory trendelenburg or an early weight shift. The reach/rotation helps to keep the CoM centered within the pelvis through the exercise.

Or it offers overload the the lateral muscles to strengthen them.

Or it offers a novel input to cause a phase shift in the dynamic system leading to a self-organizing output.

Or it's a sensory/cortical mapping exercise when cues to feel the following calcaneus to roll from lateral to medial.

Or it activates multiple synergistic muscles leading to irradiation and improved glute contraction. Ipsilateral abdominals and glutes work well together.

Or it loads the lateral line with constant tension leading to mechanotransduction and tissue adaptation.

In other words, it can be many things. Seeing movement through different lenses is important because every person is different. Different people need different perspectives.

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#PRI #TransversePlaneForFrontalPlane #Hips #Glutes