exercises ideas

Stand up with your feet together. Lower your arms and torso in front of you while raising one leg behind the body. Keep the opposite knee slightly bent and reach the arms as close to the floor as possible. To return to the starting position, raise your torso while lowering the back leg.

Lie on the floor with your hands at your side. Bend one leg and keep one straight. Perform the bridging movement by pushing through the heel on the floor and squeezing your glutes.

Place your shoulders on a chair, bench, or bed. With your hands at the side of your head, push through your heels and squeeze your glutes to lift your hips as high as possible. Hold the top position for a few seconds before returning to the ground.

To make this bodyweight exercise more difficult you can try doing it using only one leg. Bend the leg you arent using to begin with, and then try it with your leg straight out in front of you to make it more difficult still.

Find something stable to hook your heels under such as a bed and kneel on something soft such as a pillow or towel. Keeping your body upright and glutes tight, lower your body towards the floor. As you near the floor, catch yourself in a push up position and try to use your hamstrings as much as possible to spring back up to the starting position.

Raising both the shoulders and feet makes this exercise considerably more difficult because the hips have to go through a much larger range of motion. Using a raised surface such as a chair or bed for your upper back, place your feet on another surface such as a stool that is roughly the same height. From there squeeze your glutes to lift your hips as high as possible, as in other variations of this exercise.

This is the toughest of the hip raise variations, and an exercise many people will struggle with. Set up exactly the same as above, but only place one foot on a raised surface instead of two.

Nowadays its cool to hate sit ups, but done with good form this classic is still effective. Lying on the ground with your knees bent, contract your abs to lift your body off the ground. Try to limit movement in the lower back.

This is another classic exercise that is often performed incorrectly. It is basically the same as the sit up, but at the top of the movement bring the opposite elbow towards the knee. Avoid over rotating, and keep your chest up throughout to avoid excessively rounding your back.

Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor. With your hands behind the head, contract your core and curl your upper back up from the floor. Hold briefly, and then lower yourself back down.