Move of the Week: Long Lever Bridge
One of my favorite warm up and strength exercises is a long lever bridge. I program this one a lot and do it quite often for myself too :) If you’re in an anterior tilt / orientation this exercise can be great for creating some lumbar flexion, bringing the pelvis underneath us, finding your hamstrings without squeezing the glutes, and it requires less hip flexion than a 90/90 exercise.
What does that mean? :)
After pregnancy, postpartum mamas are often in an anterior tilt. A great visual is an open scissor. The pelvis is dumped forward and the ribs flared. With a belly out in front during pregnancy our body was pulled forward and the ribs shifted to accommodate an increase in belly size and abdominal contents. This position allowed us to continue moving through space with our new shape, and postpartum our body often hangs out here too! In many ways, we are still being pulled forward. This posture isn’t “bad.” The goal is we are just able to move in and out of it.
The image on the left is a more “stacked” position, ribs over pelvis. The second from the left is a more “flared” open scissor posture. While there is no “perfect” posture, ideally we’re shooting for a more stacked position while under load/lifting weight. This allows our diaphragm and pelvic floor to coordinate well to manage pressure through our body.
More on why I love a long lever bridge
The goal with the long lever bridge is to help us find more of what we need: lumbar flexion (if you’re in extension finding the opposite can actually be pretty tough), hamstrings without clenching the glutes, abdominals (especially on our exhale), and an added bonus of giving the psoas muscles on the front of the hip a bit of a stretch and release.
Other key points on why I love these movement:
The position can also help you work on hip extension and finding the glute max (the big glute muscle) with your proximal hamstrings.
The position biases the femur (leg bone) into more external rotation, which can be great if you have more IR’d at the femurs (your knees fall in a bit). No wonder it felt so good on my body!
This position helps us improve the stack of the ribcage over the pelvis when we’re in a standing position. Once we’re in a better stack we are in a better position to work on lengthening the booty behind us. A better stack AND sensing your hamstrings and glutes will allow us to better hinge, squat, walk, and do all things #momlife.
Where to Start
1. Long-Lever Glute Bridge with Block Squeeze: the block will help us stay in the sagittal plane (avoid rotating through the hips) and not overly use the external rotators (outside butt muscles).
2. Long Lever Bridge with Reach: The reach will also help with the ribcage position. Exhale the lower ribs back without crunching down. Drag down on the heels.
3. Heels Elevated Long Lever Bridge: Adding the co-contraction.
4. Long Lever Bridge/Heel to Toe: Adding the movement and breath timing while still in the sagittal plane. Demo video below with single leg, but recommend starting with both feet on the wall.
5. Single Leg Long Lever Bridge: Introducing frontal plane control
6. Single Leg Long Lever with abduction: now taking knee out to the side on inhale, exhale back to center. This brings in transverse plane control / rotation and the opposite hamstring is working overtime! If this is too difficult, just minimize the movement or regress the single leg bridge variation. You can also make this more dynamic by inhaling up onto the balls of the feet, and then exhaling to drag down.
While there are definitely variations you can perform in between these progressions, these options provide you with an opportunity to advance sagittal plane control —> frontal plane —> transverse plane.
As you work on progressing the movement, watch for clenching the glutes and shoving the hips forward. “Drag” down on the wall with your heels to help connect with your hamstrings and bring the pelvis into a position. If you are more of a “swayback” presentation, we may opt for a different position and work on opening up the posterior pelvic floor / glutes :)
Extra resources to check out:
Interested in learning more about how I incorporate these movements in Postpartum Fitness programs? I’d love to chat! I offer 1:1 personal training in San Diego + virtually, along with online coaching.
xoxo,
Erica