Fit to Ride in 9 Weeks! by Heather Sansom

Author:Heather Sansom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Trafalgar Square Books

CORE TRAINING

Bird Dog—Single Limb (All Fours)

Goal: 6–10 reps.

Muscles Worked: Transverse abdominis, gluteus maximus, shoulder rotators, latissimus dorsi, deltoids.

The Bird Dog variations are intended to introduce asymmetrical loading to your back. These exercises also train muscle memory and muscle-firing patterns for the chain of muscles that stabilize your torso laterally and that help you control the placement of your shoulders and hips.

The goal of all the variations is to keep your spine neutral, using the floor under you to make sure your shoulders and hips are straight or square to the floor, even when you raise a limb. Training your body off the floor, but still using the floor to help you achieve straightness, prepares you for later freestanding work by training proprioception for true alignment.

1 | Start by positioning yourself on all fours so that you feel even pressure between both knees and both hands. Achieve a neutral spine by hollowing and raising your back repeatedly with gradually smaller movement until you can feel that mid-point where you are neither rounding your back, nor allowing it to sag.

2 | Once you are in a spine-neutral position, raise an arm and hold it for three seconds before resting and repeating (the same arm) 6 to 10 times (fig. 8.1 A).

3 | Do this exercise with the other arm (fig. 8.1 B).

4 | Repeat with each leg. With the legs, pay special attention to not allowing your lower back to hollow. The goal is not to raise your leg high in the air, but to use your gluteals, hamstrings, and back while maintaining a neutral spine (figs. 8.1 C & D).

Done correctly, you should feel the need to increase your abdominal use the higher you lift an arm or leg in order to maintain spine neutrality. The “top” of the movement is the point at which you still have a neutral spine, but you feel as if your body is having an internal tug of war between your core and the muscles used to raise the limb.

8.1 A–D Bird Dog—Single Limb

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