Single Leg Balance with Reach (Excursion)

Single Leg Balance with Reach (Excursion) is a popular core exercise that challenges your balance, coordination, and mobility. This exercise requires you to stand on one leg while you reach out and touch an object in front of you with the opposite arm. The goal is to stabilize the pelvis and the torso while using a full range of motion in the shoulder joint. Benefits include improved body awareness, balance, coordination, and strength. This exercise helps you develop a stronger core and can help prevent

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This is Brent, president of B2c Fitness and

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of course we are doing our single leg balance

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with a reach, or single leg balance with excursion exercise.

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This exercise is great for stabilization, as well as being a great integrated stability

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exercise for those individuals with lower leg dysfunction, as it's going to focus on

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the strength of our inverters of the ankle, as well as our gluteus medius.

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I'm going to have my friend Leann come up and help me demonstrate this exercise.

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Now the first thing I should probably note is I have Leann looking a little goofy here.

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She's pulled up her pant legs so that we can see the most important part of this exercise

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which is going to be he foot-ankle complex, and how that aligns with the rest of hip and

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knee.

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The first thing I'm going to have Leann do is move her feet so that her second toe is

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pointing forward.

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This will be optimal alignment.

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I've aligned her second and third toe up with her patella, they're underneath her hips.

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Of course I'm going to mind the rest of my kinetic chain check points making sure hips

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are nuetral, shoulders are down and back, and her head is nice and squared, ear over her shoulder

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So, we've got all our kinetic chain checkpoints in line, lets go back to our exercise cueing.

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I want to make sure Leann maintains her median longitudinal arch, so that's this part of

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your foot, the inside of your foot that shouldn't be touching the ground.

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So she might need to press her first MTP, or that's the ball behind your big toe into

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the floor and really try to focus to maintain that arch, you got that?

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From there, the next part's, well, easy for me to cue not so easy to do.

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I want Leann to stand on one leg, leaning as little as she possibly can.

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So let's go ahead and stand on one leg, of course to maintain hip stability, she's going

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to have to use one of my favorite cues, which is "hold a dollar bill between your cheeks".

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Or a hundred dollar bill between your cheeks, that'll get her glutes firing, the gluteus

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medius firing, keeping her nice and stable.

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And this is the first part of the exercise.

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Leann is this challenging?

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This is challenging, just to maintain a single leg, imagine I have a plumb line going straight

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down through the center of her nose, center of her sternum and the center of her feet,

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she's not leaning.

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So I'm really trying to maintain optimal alignment.

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Just holding this is getting her gluteus medius fired up, I guarantee she starts feeling it

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in her ankle and the bottom of her foot.

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So if we can do this for lets say, 60 seconds, that's pretty good.

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From there maybe we'll progress.

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So the progression is where the reach, or the excursion comes in.

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So the first excursion we're going to do is have Leann reach out forward, this is our

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sagittal plane reach.

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She's going to reach out as far as she can, without losing that optimal alignment, without

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losing the arch of her foot, and without losing her gluteus medius activation.

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Go ahead and bring that back.

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The next one would be a frontal plane reach.

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Alright so that's going to be out to the side.

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Of course I can help Leann out here a little bit by having her go out and slightly back,

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this will cue this gluteus medius to fire as well, rather than her TFL which is going

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to be overactive in those individuals with lower leg dysfunction.

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So she can reach out, making sure she maintains the arch of her foot, gluteus medius contracted

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on this side, she's not leaning too far this way.

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And then of course from there we can go to a transverse plane reach.

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So transverse plane reach, she's going to reach around, back almost at a 45 degree angle

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with this leg, while trying to maintain optimal alignment on the leg she's standing on.

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And that's a challenge, we've actually done a couple takes of this video, she's started

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to get a little sore.

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So, you guys can set up a clock face if you wanted to and reach towards different numbers

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on the clock.

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You guys could reach sagittal, frontal, transverse.

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You guys could progress and do all sagittal for a while, and then once they got that do

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all frontal for a while.

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I would say that most of the time, the frontal plane reach is the toughest.

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That's the one that usual has people collapse, that's usual where they try to lose that gluteus

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medius contraction and start to lean.

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You guys could set this up as either reps, slow and controlled, or you guys could set

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a stop watch.

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Now I think the biggest mistake made on this exercise is people tend to underestimate it.

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It's tough guys, if you maintain alignment, maintain your cueing, just 15 seconds you'll

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start to feel it.

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60 seconds is tough.

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And I have to give a shout out to my boy Rick, who I've seen do this to people in workshops

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for up to 2 minutes to the point where he renamed it "the single leg excursion of death".

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Because he'll do it to you for so long, so hard, gets your gluteus medius so fired up,

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you're going to wish you only had one leg.

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I hope you guys have a lot of fun with this exercise, thank you again to Leann for demonstrating

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this exercise, not for 1 take but multiple.

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Single Leg Balance with Reach (Excursion)

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Single Leg Balance with Reach (Excursion)

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