If you’re familiar with Complete Fitness Results at all, you know one thing we really hone in on is corrective exercise. That’s why it’s in every single warm up and is strongly encouraged to do daily– several times if possible–whether you’re at the training studio or not. I’m sure you’ve heard us say before, “You can’t stack fitness on top of dysfunction”–Gray Cook, but it can’t be said enough.
Everything we do outside of our training sessions should be spent reinforcing what we do in our training sessions. But the truth is, most people just aren’t mindful of that, and well, that’s out of any trainers control.
But instead of harping on anyone about what they should and should not be doing, I’m just gonna go ahead and place one of our favorite corrective exercises below to hopefully inspire you to do this corrective–or your own individualized correctives if you have them–because it literally only takes about 2-3 minutes, but it can reset your entire day!
Corrective Exercise: Bird Dog
This is a great exercise for core and spinal stabilization, rotary stability, postural control, shoulder stability and mobility, hip alignment, reduce low-back pain and promote greater balance and motor control–to name a few.
Variations of Bird Dog
#1 Arms
- Maintain a neutral spine in a quadruped position with your knees under your hips and your hands under your shoulders
- Inhale through your nose
- On the exhale, extend your arm forward and up to parallel with the floor
- Release arm back to starting position
- Repeat with opposite arm
Once you’re able to breathe through this position equally on the left and right sides of the body while maintaining a neutral spine you’re ready to move on to the next variation.
#2 Legs
- Maintain a neutral spine in a quadruped position with your knees under your hips and your hands under your shoulders
- Inhale through your nose
- On the exhale, extend your leg back and up to parallel with the floor
- Release leg back to starting position
- Repeat with opposite leg
Once you’re able to breathe through this position equally on the left and right sides of the body while maintaining a neutral spine you’re ready to move on to the next variation.
#3 Arms and Legs
- Maintain a neutral spine in a quadruped position with your knees under your hips and your hands under your shoulders
- Inhale through your nose
- On the exhale, extend your opposite arm and leg up to parallel with the floor
- Release leg and arm back to starting position
- Repeat with opposite leg and arm
Key notes: It’s important that you “own” each variation of this exercise before moving on to the next. We want to make sure you’re able to breathe through each movement from start to finish without compromising neutral spine, rotating the hips, losing balance and/or shoulder stability, but we also want to make sure that each side of the body moves equilaterally and without pain.
For greater detail on how to do this exercise and what we look for, check out this video:
Hope you enjoy this exercise as much as we do at Complete Fitness Results! If not, well, I hope it at least reminded you to slow down, breathe deep and move well today.