Glutes without Hamstrings Exercise- Pigeons

http://www.FoundationPTSA.com Check out our other videos for more tips. If you feel pain, stop. Video Transcription: Welcome back to Foundation Physical Therapy’s YouTube Channel today we’re going to go over an activity to help you isolate your glutes. If you feel like you don’t have a lot of glute strength or the lack of glute activity is giving you hip problems, back problems or effecting your performance then this is an easy activity actually its not very easy. This is a good activity to let you know if you can fire your glutes and how to strengthen them in this position. So what you do is you basically lay on any flat surface and you’re going to lay on your stomach and you’re going to bring one of your legs up. So I’m going to do this with the right side but I’ll show you what you’ll do eventually is you would bring one leg up like this. Now if you can’t get this leg way up like this it’s not a problem you can prop up on your elbows as long as you’re not arching your back. Ideally you want to get in this position and come down like so. A lot of times this is called a pigeon in yoga and them what you’ll do with the opposite leg is you’ll straighten it out, so I’ll pull my toes underneath, straighten my knee I want to engage the glutes on the left side in this case and then straighten that leg out and then just squeeze the glutes. Now I’ll just hold and what I’m trying to do is get that leg straight behind me. I’m going to feel a stretch in the front of my hip on the left side in this case and then I’m just going to squeeze that glute and I’m trying to get a nice contraction in my glute and learn what it feels like to engage those glutes and then transition that into my standing activities. So what it would look like from the other side is again now I bring the left leg up, prop myself here make sure not to arch my back, plant my right toe then I want to squeeze the glutes on my right as early as I can and drive that right leg to straight. Then just hold that contraction again just priming glutes it’s a good activity to do before any you do any kind of squatting activity to make sure that your glutes are coming along for the ride.