Today we wanted to talk about the bird dog! You’ll often see this used in rehab as well as rehab to strengthen the core. Often times the people think the bird dog is a very easy and boring exercise to do, but this is often because they may not be doing it correctly. This means they aren’t getting the proper recruitment from their core that we’re looking for.
So to get the desired effect we want to:
- Make sure your body is a table
This means that we aren’t extending back arching our back and rounding forward like a cat
- Both of your hips are facing the mat
You’ll often see that people open up at the hip like a dog peeing on a fire hydrant. They do this because it of loads one hip more than the other.
- Trying to kick the back leg to high
This actually goes for the arm as well. We like to tell people to kick their leg back and punch their arm forward instead of trying to get the leg or arm to high causing them to arch their back.
- Try and Squeeze through you’re core first
Trying to brace your core first will stop a lot of those side to side shifts we tend to get as we get tired.
Let us know if this helped!
