♪ Bob and Brad ♪
♪ the two most famous ♪
♪ physical therapist ♪
♪ on the internet ♪
- Hello, I'm Sara Meeks
and I'm here today to demonstrate an exercise
called the side-lying leg lift.
This is an exercise that strengthens
a muscle called the gluteus medius.
Now, the gluteus medius is located
on the side of your hip
and its action
is to bring the leg,
I'm gonna do this with my other leg,
out to the side in what's called AB or abduction.
It is the primary stabilizing muscle of the hip
and when you walk, when you put your right leg forward
or if you ever put the right leg backwards
if you're walking backwards,
then this is the muscle that stabilizes the other hip
so that you can stand on that leg
and move ahead or back or whichever way
that you're walking.
It is probably the most important stabilizer of your hip
and its main function is hip abduction and stabilization.
I know that you will find possibly on the internet
other exercises that will tell you
that you're strengthening the gluteus medius
so I did a deep dive into the research literature
and I found
one study where they looked at
about six different exercises
that were claimed to strengthen this muscle.
And the number one muscle,
the number one exercise for this muscle
is the side-lying leg lift.
I'm going to get on this table and demonstrate,
you can also lie on the floor, of course,
if you can do that,
and if you have a balance problem lying on your side
then you could back up to a wall
and have your body against a wall
so you could stay stable there.
There is a balance issue for lying on your side
for some people so you wanna make sure
that you're stable when you're on your side
and doing this exercise.
So I'm going to get on the table
and then I'm gonna roll over onto my back
and then onto my right side
so I'll be moving the left leg for the exercise.
So to get on the table, I think I demonstrated this
before for another exercise,
but an easy way to get on the table
especially if the table is high here,
I just lift one leg up and then I bring the other leg
up onto the table and I'm lying on my abdomen.
I roll over onto my right side and then
I'm going to lie on my back.
So I'm turning on my back
and notice I'm starting, I kind of try to roll
over rather than go segmentally
so my whole body is moving in the same direction.
I check to see if I'm in the middle of the table,
for starters, especially if I'm gonna do other exercises
by just taking my hands out from my hips
and if it seems like it's the same distance,
I feel like I'm in the middle of the table.
Now to turn on my right side,
what I'm going to do is I'm going to move over
to my left side a little more
so that when I lie on my right side,
I'm definitely still on the table.
So I like to bring my arm up alongside my ear
as I roll on my side
so that I have a support for my head.
Now, you don't have to bring your arm up along the side,
you can also have your arm down in front of you
if you can't bring your arm all the way.
This is a little bit advanced
and it's just the way I like to do it.
I've practice my balance
on this position quite a lot
so I can even lie on my side
without holding on with the left arm either.
There are other positions that I could use.
Okay, So now the idea is, for this demonstration,
I'm going to do the exercise on my left leg.
Now, I wanna make sure much as I can feel
that I'm in alignment with my body,
I don't want my legs out in front of me
because then if I lift my leg,
I'll be doing a different muscle than the gluteus medius.
So I wanna keep my legs in alignment
with the core of my body.
So what I do is I take a breath in,
and as I breathe out, I tighten my abdominals a little bit
and I press the bottom leg into the table
between the hip and the knee.
I'm not pushing the foot down,
I'm pushing the leg down in the thigh.
And you will notice that as I do that,
just the action of the gluteus medius on the right
is actually activating the one on the left also.
So
to do the side-lying leg lift, I wanna be stable
so I tighten my abdominals,
I press the bottom leg down which initiates
the movement on the left,
and then I wanna keep the side of my foot
heading toward the ceiling
so I'm not rotating the leg,
I'm abducting the leg.
I go as high as I can,
I'm still pushing on the right leg and lifting the left
and I'm going to count to about 10
seconds to hold this.
I probably have already done six or seven
just talking through this.
And then I'm going to very slowly
bring the left leg down.
This
brings out an eccentric or lengthening contraction
of the gluteus medius which eccentric contractions
of muscles
end up as the best strengthening movement
for muscle action.
So I wanna come slowly down.
Now, I don't believe in doing a lot of reps
because what happens is even though the person
might not feel fatigue,
the muscles tend to fatigue if they're weak
and then the person will start modifying
or compensating for the muscles being tired
and then they're not doing the same exercise.
So I give myself a little bit of a rest between repetition
so I'm gonna take another breath and do the exercise again.
So I press down, feel the lift,
and then begin the lift.
As I'm breathing out,
go as high as I can keeping an alignment with my body.
I'm at five.
(Sara exhaling)
And then slowly, I'm still pressing with the right leg.
I'm doing a little bit of balancing with my hand,
my left hand here.
Down.
Okay, now the thing that you want to avoid, I mentioned
bringing the side of the foot toward the ceiling.
What you will see a lot of people doing,
especially as they're starting to get tired
is when they lift the leg, they'll start to rotate it.
So they're pointing their toes
more toward the ceiling,
but they're not getting the gluteus medius
in the position of abduction that we want.
Sometimes I tell people that
when you lift the leg,
you wanna focus on lifting the heel
up a little higher than the toes.
I can't really tell if I'm doing that,
but that's what I'm trying to do.
And that will help keep my leg in better alignment
for abduction.
And then remember coming slowly down.
So the maximum number of repetitions
that I usually do for this exercise is three.
That seems to be plenty for me.
I usually count to 10,
sometimes with this leg depending upon when I'm doing it
and so on how strong I feel,
I may count to 20,
that's about as high as I've gotten
because it does get really tired
and I can feel a lot of tension
in this area in my body.
So
now, I'm showing this lying on my right side
and lifting the left leg.
And then, and when I'm doing my exercises myself,
I will turn over on my left side
and do the exercise with my right leg.
I have osteoarthritis in my right hip
so I'm not able to lift that leg as high
as I can lift the left one
but I've been working on this
and I've gained several
inches of being able to lift that leg
just by practicing and also understanding
that even though I'm now lying on the right side,
when I press down with the right leg,
that muscle is getting strengthened too
to help me stabilize in order to lift the other leg.
So that's a demonstration of the side-lying leg lift
on the table here.
Now, if your balance lying on your side
is not so good, then you could lie on the floor
with your back up against a wall
so that you'd have some stability.
Or if you're in a therapy session
have the therapist help you maintain your balance
as you start to learn how to do this exercise
because you do want to stay on your side.
So thank you for watching
the demonstration of the side-lying leg lift.
(relaxing music)