00:03 - 00:07This is Brent, president of B2c Fitness and of course we are doing our single leg balance
00:07 - 00:11with a reach, or single leg balance with excursion exercise.
00:11 - 00:16This exercise is great for stabilization, as well as being a great integrated stability
00:16 - 00:21exercise for those individuals with lower leg dysfunction, as it's going to focus on
00:21 - 00:24the strength of our inverters of the ankle, as well as our gluteus medius.
00:24 - 00:29I'm going to have my friend Leann come up and help me demonstrate this exercise.
00:29 - 00:36Now the first thing I should probably note is I have Leann looking a little goofy here.
00:36 - 00:41She's pulled up her pant legs so that we can see the most important part of this exercise
00:41 - 00:46which is going to be he foot-ankle complex, and how that aligns with the rest of hip and
00:46 - 00:47knee.
00:47 - 00:52The first thing I'm going to have Leann do is move her feet so that her second toe is
00:52 - 00:54pointing forward.
00:54 - 00:55This will be optimal alignment.
00:55 - 01:00I've aligned her second and third toe up with her patella, they're underneath her hips.
01:00 - 01:04Of course I'm going to mind the rest of my kinetic chain check points making sure hips
01:04 - 01:10are nuetral, shoulders are down and back, and her head is nice and squared, ear over her shoulder
01:10 - 01:14So, we've got all our kinetic chain checkpoints in line, lets go back to our exercise cueing.
01:14 - 01:21I want to make sure Leann maintains her median longitudinal arch, so that's this part of
01:21 - 01:26your foot, the inside of your foot that shouldn't be touching the ground.
01:26 - 01:33So she might need to press her first MTP, or that's the ball behind your big toe into
01:33 - 01:39the floor and really try to focus to maintain that arch, you got that?
01:39 - 01:46From there, the next part's, well, easy for me to cue not so easy to do.
01:46 - 01:52I want Leann to stand on one leg, leaning as little as she possibly can.
01:52 - 01:57So let's go ahead and stand on one leg, of course to maintain hip stability, she's going
01:57 - 02:02to have to use one of my favorite cues, which is "hold a dollar bill between your cheeks".
02:02 - 02:07Or a hundred dollar bill between your cheeks, that'll get her glutes firing, the gluteus
02:07 - 02:10medius firing, keeping her nice and stable.
02:10 - 02:12And this is the first part of the exercise.
02:12 - 02:14Leann is this challenging?
02:14 - 02:21This is challenging, just to maintain a single leg, imagine I have a plumb line going straight
02:21 - 02:25down through the center of her nose, center of her sternum and the center of her feet,
02:25 - 02:26she's not leaning.
02:26 - 02:30So I'm really trying to maintain optimal alignment.
02:30 - 02:35Just holding this is getting her gluteus medius fired up, I guarantee she starts feeling it
02:35 - 02:38in her ankle and the bottom of her foot.
02:38 - 02:43So if we can do this for lets say, 60 seconds, that's pretty good.
02:43 - 02:44From there maybe we'll progress.
02:44 - 02:48So the progression is where the reach, or the excursion comes in.
02:48 - 02:53So the first excursion we're going to do is have Leann reach out forward, this is our
02:53 - 02:54sagittal plane reach.
02:54 - 03:00She's going to reach out as far as she can, without losing that optimal alignment, without
03:00 - 03:05losing the arch of her foot, and without losing her gluteus medius activation.
03:05 - 03:08Go ahead and bring that back.
03:08 - 03:11The next one would be a frontal plane reach.
03:11 - 03:13Alright so that's going to be out to the side.
03:13 - 03:20Of course I can help Leann out here a little bit by having her go out and slightly back,
03:20 - 03:25this will cue this gluteus medius to fire as well, rather than her TFL which is going
03:25 - 03:28to be overactive in those individuals with lower leg dysfunction.
03:28 - 03:34So she can reach out, making sure she maintains the arch of her foot, gluteus medius contracted
03:34 - 03:43on this side, she's not leaning too far this way.
03:43 - 03:49And then of course from there we can go to a transverse plane reach.
03:49 - 03:51So transverse plane reach, she's going to reach around, back almost at a 45 degree angle
03:51 - 03:57with this leg, while trying to maintain optimal alignment on the leg she's standing on.
03:57 - 04:00And that's a challenge, we've actually done a couple takes of this video, she's started
04:00 - 04:02to get a little sore.
04:02 - 04:06So, you guys can set up a clock face if you wanted to and reach towards different numbers
04:06 - 04:08on the clock.
04:08 - 04:12You guys could reach sagittal, frontal, transverse.
04:12 - 04:17You guys could progress and do all sagittal for a while, and then once they got that do
04:17 - 04:18all frontal for a while.
04:18 - 04:23I would say that most of the time, the frontal plane reach is the toughest.
04:23 - 04:29That's the one that usual has people collapse, that's usual where they try to lose that gluteus
04:29 - 04:31medius contraction and start to lean.
04:31 - 04:36You guys could set this up as either reps, slow and controlled, or you guys could set
04:36 - 04:37a stop watch.
04:37 - 04:41Now I think the biggest mistake made on this exercise is people tend to underestimate it.
04:41 - 04:47It's tough guys, if you maintain alignment, maintain your cueing, just 15 seconds you'll
04:47 - 04:49start to feel it.
04:49 - 04:5060 seconds is tough.
04:50 - 04:57And I have to give a shout out to my boy Rick, who I've seen do this to people in workshops
04:57 - 05:03for up to 2 minutes to the point where he renamed it "the single leg excursion of death".
05:03 - 05:08Because he'll do it to you for so long, so hard, gets your gluteus medius so fired up,
05:08 - 05:10you're going to wish you only had one leg.
05:10 - 05:15I hope you guys have a lot of fun with this exercise, thank you again to Leann for demonstrating
05:15 - 05:18this exercise, not for 1 take but multiple.
05:18 - 05:19And I'll talk you guys soon.