If you’re trying to get the most out of your leg program, you might want to try an exercise called Hip Airplane. I know a lot of us use squats and lunges to stay strong for strength in the sports we enjoy. With ski season right around the corner, you’ll need good hip function. Good hip function keeps you symmetrical on skis, or in a squat, minimizes any hip shifting, and helps mobility. The Airplane is an exercise that targets the posterior hip muscles, the Gluteus Medius and Maximus. Strengthening these muscles is important, as your glutes are key lateral stabilizing muscles of the hip and legs, including the hamstrings.
Along with teaching you good pelvic control, which can eliminate back pain, or excessive motion in your back (not good) the Airplane also targets six muscles in the deep gluteal region known as external rotators of the hip joint. Yes, squats and lunges are fundamental strengthening exercises. Your glutes have to work hard when you lift yourself out of the bottom of a squat. But squats are typically performed in a one plane of motion-up and down. Very few exercises work on the rotational aspect of a move. The Airplane does just that: it helps improve your mobility, especially if you are tighter on one side. For skiers who feel like they are tighter turning one way than the other, this can be a helpful pre-season exercise.
Airplane is also a terrific neuromotor exercise. Performing it throughout the season can improve your motor skills, such as balance, coordination, agility, gait and proprioception. The advantage of practicing most single leg exercise is that any neuromotor exercise helps solidify a connection between the nervous and muscular systems.
Hip Airplane:
To begin, ground one foot into the floor.
1. Place your hands on your hips. Ground one foot into the floor, hinge from your hips, and lift the opposite leg back.
Hinge from your hips, and lift the opposite leg back. Hold 5 seconds.
2. Open the hip about 2 inches, or as far as you can, squeezing the glute. Hold 5 seconds.
Tip- Steer the hip inward around the pelvis.
3. Drop the hip inward: you’ll feel a good stretch. Hold 5 seconds.4. Return to start.
Keep pressing into the stance foot, and fully extend your back leg, squeezing the gluteals.
5. To make it easier : Hold onto a bar or wall for support. You can also use your arms for balance.
All winter sports require strong leg muscles, good balance and core support—all benefits of doing regular squats. The squat is one of the most common and basic exercises performed in strength training and offers a tremendous bang for your buck.
There are many reasons you should be doing squats, if you aren’t already doing so. Getting out of a car, climbing stairs, skate or ski, all depend on strong legs. Squats strengthen your leg muscles, especially the quadriceps, glutes, and core, burn calories and help prevent injury. The inner thigh, hamstrings and calves are all challenged. Additionally, the erector spinae serve as stabilizing muscles in a squat. They help strengthen your core and promote good posture.
Form is so important in squats, and there are four common problems you often see; excessive forward lean, low back arching, low back rounding, or a lateral hip shift. Muscle imbalances, like tight hip flexors and calves, or weak core support, are often the culprits here. Lacking the mobility in your hips or ankles, forgetting to use your core muscles, or weak gluteal strength all contribute to problematic squats.
A fun and humbling test to improve your squat would look like this: Crawl on the floor for a few paces, rock forward, and without using your hands, stand up. This effectively demonstrates ankle and hip mobility, and core and lower body strength needed to transfer your weight up into standing. This drill exemplifies strength and mobility, important qualities in a squat.
Let’s look at two quick fixes to improve your squat technique.
Hip hinge with Dowel
The hip hinge is one of the most important cues to think of when you perform a squat. Hinging at your hips, in any type of squat, saves the spine stress and strain, as the motion is focused on the hips, not the back. The dowel teaches you to maintain a tall spine, without the head falling forward, a common mistake. The dowel exercise also helps correct excessive forward lean, or the lower back rounding.
Hip hinge with dowel Photo by Connie AronsonThe dowel must remain in contact with these 3 points throughout your hip hinge range.
• Place a dowel, or broom stick on the base of your skull, the thoracic spine –your upper back, and the sacrum.
• The dowel must remain in contact with these 3 points throughout your hip hinge range.
• Think of sinking your hips backwards, and return to start position.
• Your legs can be straight or a slight knee bend.
• Do 8 x, slowly.
Squat with heel lifts
If your calves are tight, or you lack ankle mobility, try placing gym plates or a wedge under you heels in a squat. This will help you bend at the ankles (ankle dorsiflexion) an action that brings the shin over the foot. Improving your ankle flexibility will also help you flex into your ski turn more dynamically!
Squat with weight Photo by Connie AronsonSquat form: Squat down by bending hips back while allowing knees to bend forward, keeping back straight, knees in line with toes. Descend until thighs are parallel or just pastparallel. To rise back up, contract glutes and pressure through whole foot.Perfect squat form ( with overhead arms )
Through proper exercise, movement, and posture, you can help low back pain.
Kevin Mullins, a master instructor for Equinox Sports Club in Washington, D.C. understands low-level chronic back pain and found three recurring issues that personal trainers can address with their clients. Excess bodyweight, sedentary lifestyles, and improper exercise selection, are areas a trainer can help a client with, all factors having a correlation to low back pain. It is estimated that over 84 % of the population will experience an episode of LBP, from children to the elderly, at some time during life.
As well, age, stress, occupational factors, lack of flexibility or hyper-mobility, sports, postural habits, and smoking are other contributing factors.
Recovering from low back pain is a long complex road. If you are in pain, but not dealing with any diagnosed or diagnosed medical issue, you fall into the category of mechanical low back pain, or LBP.
Unlike a car, says Dr. McGill, one of the most widely respected spine researchers in the world, where you change one thing and it’s fixed, fixing a back is different. Back pain is more complicated and is much more than just fixing one part. Because, McGill notes, it comes down to cold hard science.
How the spine functions and it’s relationship the rest of the body is the key to being free of back pain. Through proper exercise, movement, and posture, even disc bulges can be made less painful, and usually pain-free, he notes.
Of course it’s hard to stick to a program if you are in pain. You lose the very conditioning that could help treat LBP, or even more frustrating, gain unwanted weight.That extra weight is the number one reason clients turn to a trainer, with or without low back pain. Healing starts to occur when you keep the bigger picture in mind; a good diet,adequate sleep, and a matched activity/ training program.
Tip #1 The Big Picture
A traditional strength training can improve strength and muscle mass. Overall body strength as well as a daily walking regime are important part of a client’s program to become free of back pain.
Tip #2 Bend at the hips, rather than the spine
There is a direct correlation between posture and pain. You can reduce episodes of back pain by reminding yourself to bend at the hips, which is a ball and socket joint, not the back. The spine does bend, but repeated spine bending, whether it’s picking up a weight in the gym, or swinging a kettlebell, could eventually lead to delaminations in the layers of the discs. Someone swinging a kettlebell, along with their back, instead of stabilizing the spine while doing so, to protect the spine, risks further trauma to an already sensitive back. When you’re performing squats, for example, sink your hips back towards your heels, like sitting onto a low park bench. Keep your eyes forward. Use your hips rather than round your back.
Tip #3 Rethink the core
To enhance back fitness, you need a strong focus on core strength, as theses muscles play a protective role. The internal and external obliques, transverse and rectus abdominals, and the erector spinae are arranged around the spine and act as guy wires to allow the spine to control movement, bear loads and facilitate breathing. But all too often you see good athletes and gym members entirely focused on just the rectus abdominis, commonly known as the “6 pack”. If we go back to our car analogy, focusing on only one part won’t solve back pain.
The core musculature extends to the entire body, from the upper back down to the pelvis, not just the 6 pack.The lats, trapezius, the gluteals, hamstrings, hip flexors and inner and outer thighs all have an impact on the spine.
Typically what happens with someone experiencing low back pain, is that that pain hasn’t allowed them to adequately train. The outcome is weaker core and gluteal muscles. This is where science comes in.
To see how important the glutes are for strength, try this exercise; Stand on one leg and balance. Then sink your hips back slightly, behind your heel, and see how much more stable standing on one leg feels. This is a great demonstration of the role the gluteals play regarding core strength.
Your progression, with an awareness on good movement patterns, including planks, back rows, squats and bridges, for example, should be aimed at strengthening more and more of your whole body, back to health.
