Single Leg Kick

Let's take a look at the single leg kick. One of my absolute favorite exercises from the matwork. It's a sweet combination of core holistic core stability, shoulder stabilization, and leg strength and mobility. So, let's look a little bit at the shape. You'll begin on your on your belly, and the whole full expression of the exercise is high up on the elbows, body reaching forward up here.

A lot of times I feel we don't quite have the strength to support this position. So it's my recommendation to think about beginning this exercise from the bottom. Use your back muscles and decide how high you can lift with thoracic extensors. Use your strong arms, pull forward just a little bit, and then make sure you can almost hold this position on your own. That's a great place to set the kickstand that is your arms. But what's important is that you don't relax into the exercise. Instead, you're using your upper back muscles.

You're using your abdominal muscles. You're staying strong through your whole core in this back extension position. Then we lift those legs up using the back of the leg, the glutes, and the hamstrings, and we add the kicking. Now the kicking adds instability to the core. And a lot of times what I see when we begin the kicking is a lot of wobbling around of the upper body or a lower body or pelvis. So really important to keep the core very stable while doing it. So let's start from the bottom here.

I'm going to again in hell, perhaps in lift to back extension, I'm gonna use my arms to pull forward a little. I'll set my arms up and lift maybe a little bit higher. Keep the gaze slightly forward shoulders pulling back, ribs are tucked in, hover the legs up. The choreography that we're looking for is this kick, one, two, and then a quick change, one, two. So generally, we'll go keep going with the kicking, kinda quickly.

Ideally, the legs are lifted the entire time. My legs are trying to be lifted, that's about all the hip extension that I have. I might use an inhale for two pulses on each side and then an exhale, exhale inhale inhale exhale and exhale. So that would be the full expression of the exercise. If one cannot comfortably lift there without feeling the low back and or the knees, one might modify and just lift to the thoracic extension, then you'll feel your legs can hover a little more, and that is a really great way to build up to the single leg kick. Thanks for playing