| Some of you have asked why we often include lunges, hip stretches and scooter in our Find Your Flow® programs.
The simple answer is that they’re really good exercises – particularly to warm up with.
But why?
These movements use all of the muscles in our legs, as well as requiring us to use muscles in our core (particularly abdominal and back muscles) for stability and balance.
They’re great for increasing strength and endurance in those muscles. Because we work on each leg separately, they sometimes expose imbalances in strength and/or greater flexibility in one leg. We can then work on those imbalances.
As we grow more confident in our strength and balance, we can challenge ourselves further by taking our hands off the foot-bar; by adding in some rotations; and by increasing the load on the springs.
Crucially, lunges, hip stretches and Scooter also help open our hips – a necessary antidote to sitting for long hours, at a desk, in the car, or simply relaxing on the sofa. We often notice – and hope you do – that everyone looks taller at the end of a class. That’s usually because, on arrival, we’re a little bit bent over (almost imperceptibly!) – tight hips can pull on muscles in our lower back and prevent us from standing tall on top of our pelvis.
The Scooter has many of the same benefits, but in addition, improves our ability to move our legs freely in the hip joint socket, without pulling on our pelvis and spine. (We call that hip disassociation.)
That’s really important in preventing lower back problems. If, for example, when we’re walking, our legs can’t move freely in the hip joint, muscles supporting our spine and/or pelvis will join in to compensate. This can cause those muscle to over-work, leading to lower back pain.
The Scooter is such a great exercise to familiarise ourselves with hip disassociation. If we do it often, we may notice how much more freely we can walk, particularly over longer distances.
Although challenging – (we can often ‘feel the burn’ in the glutes, the quads and/or hamstrings) – these movements are also fun to perform. We’ve all enjoyed adding ‘hops’ (or ‘leaps’) to our lunges – great for raising the heart rate, while the Scooter can take us right back to the carefree days of childhood.
So, that’s why you’ll see them cropping up (with subtle variations) in many of our Find Your Flow® programs.
If you’d like to experience lunges, hip stretches or Scooter – reserve your place at one of our classes below – we’d love to share it with you! |
