The Supine leg lifts are great exercises that target your “core muscles“, and can be progressed (harder) or regressed (easier) depending on what level you may be at! In addition, the beauty of this exercise is its simplicity and effectiveness whether you situate yourself on a gym mat, park grass, or on a sandy beach!
Irrespective of the exercise being completed, it is vital to remember the importance of effectively building up how challenging the exercise is in a safe manner. Included throughout this blog are fantastic exercise progressions and regressions for you that you can utilise immediately!
Supine (meaning laying on your back) Leg Lift is a fantastic exercise that engages the many muscles within your core region. Don’t be fooled, it is not just your abdominals activating throughout this exercise, but many more acting on your Lumbar-pelvic when performed correctly….!
There are many associated benefits of the Supine Leg Lift exercise. Due to their nature in activating your “core muscles” (abdominals, back, pelvis and hip muscles), these exercises promote healthy hip, lower back health and stability just to mention a few.
It has been proven that these exercises are critical to delaying or reducing the onset, management and even treatment of lower back pain.
Finally, the overall simplicity of this exercise is next to none, allowing you to complete it anywhere, anytime!
As with all exercises, it is critical that you gradually build up to these more challenging exercises to ensure safety is maintained. A safe exercise progression may include the following;
Supine Pelvic Floor Activation / Unilateral Table Top
Short Lever Supine Leg Lift
Bilateral Table Top
Long Lever Supine Leg Lift
V-Sit
Hanging Leg Lift
Note: This exercise can be further progressed for added benefits!
The Supine Leg Lift is a fantastic exercise that engages the muscles within your core. The beauty of the Supine Leg Lift is the fact that it is so simple to set up, requiring minimal to no equipment. It is a great alternative exercise to train your core when you have no equipment or want to spice up your usual routine! Although it may seem easy due to its simplicity, it is deceivingly challenging with many benefits that this blog will explore!
To perform this exercise, follow these simple steps;
As mentioned in this blog, the Supine Leg Lift is a great exercise to target your core muscles, but let us get specific!
Many people are under the assumption that our core muscles are our stomach muscles or “abdominals”, which is partially correct. In fact, our core muscles are comprised of the many muscles in our abdominals, lower back, pelvis and hip region. Exercising these areas to increase muscular strength and endurance is vital to promote healthy hip and back health and stability.
So with that cleared, you may be thinking about the specific benefits of the Supine Leg Lift! Well, through the activation of your muscles within the core region, strengthening in this area will coincide. Specifically, strengthening this area will in tandem hold many benefits to greater support and stabilisation within your hips and lower back, which can therefore help reduce or delay the onset of pain. In saying this, the lower back is one of the most prevalent areas subjected to pain in adults.
Furthermore, strengthening of your core helps increase your ability to complete activities of daily living, such as walking, more efficiently and safely with less effort. In saying all this, the overall simplicity of being able to complete it, requiring minimal to no equipment to set up is a massive benefit!
As with all exercises, it is critical that you gradually build up to these more challenging exercises to ensure safety is maintained.
We have provided a safe exercise progression below with video demonstrations of each to help you work towards and beyond the Long Lever Supine Leg Lift.
If you have any further questions, please contact us anytime.
NOTE: This exercise can be further progressed, which we will review in other blogs so stay tuned!
The Supine Leg Lift is a simplistic yet effective exercise that can be implemented into your training regime despite where you may be. Using your own body weight against (and with) gravity, resistance will be given, holding many benefits targeting your core region!
The given exercise progressions and regressions should slowly be worked through and further implemented once your body has become accustomed to whatever level you may be at!
If you need further guidance, please reach out to us and take advantage of a free 15min telehealth consultation with our exercise physiologist.
Written by Paolo Mitry, an Exercise Physiologist at Activ8 Health Club
