Do you want to master your hip hinge or even the single leg deadlift pattern?  This is one of my favorite exercises to reinforce the proper mechanics.  Sometimes in order to improve movement in the pelvis, you have to break it down to single leg work.  Your pelvis is not one fixed structure, each side can rotate.  In fact, many times in our office we see patients who have leg length differences due to one side of the pelvis being tilted for various reasons or muscles imbalances.  This makes it pretty difficult to work on loading bilateral when the pelvis is off and causing one side of the body to work differently from the other.  By breaking the exercise down to unilateral, it allows you to work on the individual needs of each side.  Give this handy exercise a try next time you are in the gym!

The Single Leg Slide

A few keys:

• Equipment needed: An elevated surface, something that will slide like a furniture mover, and if available, a mirror
• Start with the sliding leg at 90 degrees
• As you initiate bending forward, begin pushing the slider behind you
• Because of the narrowness of the bench, it will guide you into staying square.  Having a mirror nearby to check in on alignment is helpful at first.  But I also love the element of having to feel out the position without a visual reference, it increases body awareness
• As the back leg reaches full extension, feel those glutes!
• Start with a few sets of 10-15 on each leg, you can also add weight to this as you progress

-S