Do you struggle to get down far enough when you squat? Do you feel restricted when you’re deadlifting, doing particular movements in the gym or simply as you’re moving around in everyday life?

It could be that you have tight hips.

How can you tell if you have tight hips?

If you are suffering with tight hips, the first thing you’ll notice is muscle restriction. You may feel that your muscles are unable to move or flex as much as you want or need them to. You can tell this by simply sitting on a bench and actively rotating one of your hips externally.

1. Turn your hip out to 45 degrees.
2. Take that a step further, so by lifting your foot the bottom of your leg runs parallel to the floor. In order to do this you should use your hands to lift your foot into position. This is called a passive movement.

You should be able to lift your foot higher with the aid of your hand than you can by trying to do the movement actively. If you can’t, that indicates your hip is...

If you’re new to core training it can be difficult to know where to start. That’s why in this tutorial I chose to concentrate on one simple exercise and break down exactly how to perform it. You’ll then be able to take this and apply it to many other exercises in order to work towards a stronger core and healthier spine.

Let’s focus on the Plank

I always advise that the easiest way to start with a plank is to move into it from a kneeling on all fours position. Focus on keeping your spine straight, or with a natural curve, keep your elbows directly below your shoulders and your forearms parallel to one another. You’re looking for a straight line from your shoulder to your knee. It doesn’t matter if you start with the back arching a little higher as it will allow for you to drop a little as you fatigue and still maintain an effective position rather than bowing.

Extend the legs to plank position…

Once you’ve found the position on all...

I may have said in the past that the biggest mistake people make when treating lower back pain is using exercise. However I’m about to contradict myself. There is a time and a place for exercise in lower back rehabilitation and it’s all about creating a stronger biological scaffold to help support the spine during the rigours of everyday life.

Understanding pain triggers before introducing exercise

All manner of daily activities can cause stiffness and pain in the back. So our first step is to work out what it is that is triggering your pain from an everyday perspective? Can you sit at your desk and be pain free? Can you go to the shops and lift your shopping bags up pain free?  We need to work out how to manage the movements that are causing a problem.

Once we’ve got to the bottom of these we can start to understand how we build exercises that help rather than causing further issue. The aim is to reduce pain and build endurance. In the video tutorial above I...

Have you ever considered the importance of your hip movement when it comes to supporting you with squats and deadlifts? In the tutorial above I shine a light on exactly why it’s important to undertake some hip mobility exercises and some of the things you should be doing to get those hips in the best possible shape for squatting and deadlifting.

Why are hip mobility exercises important?

There are several reasons why it’s important to focus on hip mobility exercises if you want to improve your squats and deadlifts and reduce the risk of injury.

1.  Hip mobility gives us a margin of error for pain and injury

When we move ineffectively, or put our joints into a sub-optimal position, we create stress, which can lead to stiffness, aches and even pain. It could be that we are unsure how to move safely in a particular way, or it might be we’re unable to move in a way that protects the joint due to tightness or lack of function.

If we’re trying to lift a...

Ever wonder how you go from a beginner level up to an advanced level in core training?

Put simply it’s about understanding how the core is designed and built and using that knowledge to select exercises that work with rather than against it. That’s why in this tutorial I go through:

• How the core is built
• Exercises that work against that build and design
• Exercises that work for that build and design

Once you understand this you can start to build dynamism, movement and extra weight into the exercises you are doing without risk of injury. And in doing so you can safely and effectively take your core strength training from a beginner to an advanced level.

Four things to understand about core muscles

1. The core is not one muscle it is one ‘unit’ of muscles:

With rectus abdominus on the front, the obliques on the side, spinal erectors on the back, transverse abdominus deeper along with quadratus lumborum (QL) and some deep spinal erectors, the trunk of our body...

I often talk about the importance of building strong and healthy muscles to protect the lower back and avoid pain and injury. But just which muscles am I talking about here and how exactly do they do their job?

Which are the key lower back muscles?

In the tutorial above I focus on two muscles – or groups of muscles – longissimus and iliocostalis, part of the erector spinae muscles, which go all the way from the tail bone up to the back of the neck.

Longissimus – this originates down on the sacrum, iliac crest and the spinus and transverse processes of the lumbar spine. These are the bony projections that stick out diagonally from the back of the vertebrae. The longissimus travels all the way up into the thoracic spine and inserts onto the ribs.

Iliocostalis – this starts down in the same area, from the sacrum, iliac crest and also the thoracolumbar fascia, like longissimus it inserts up into the thoracic spine and out onto the ribs.

As I want to concentrate...

To bend the spine or not to bend the spine…that is the question.

We hear people say it’s fine, because after all, we can. And we hear others say that bending the back during exercise is likely to damage the spine rather than develop performance.

So what’s the answer? Let’s dissect the arguments. 

Spine power – what is it and why is it relevant?

It goes without saying that the different exercises we do will exert different pressures on the spine. We feel it bending and twisting as we carry out different movements.

We might choose to move fast and repeatedly, or we might include weights to try to increase the impact of our stretches. But the faster we move or the more weight we carry, the more risk there is that the movements we’re doing will be detrimental to the spine.

When I talk about spine power, I’m talking about the relationship between these different elements of movement. And it’s best described in terms of force –...

In this tutorial we examine the theory that if you want to strengthen your core you need to train your hips. This is something I talk to my private clients about as well as covering in depth in my beginner’s Core Strength & Stability 12-Week Program.

So often in core training programs we find lots of spine bending exercises like sit-ups, crunches or twists. But these are not the most effective exercises for training the core. In order to better understand why this is, let’s talk about the anatomy of the hips and spine. Then we’ll look at some more appropriate exercises you might want to consider instead.

Anatomy of the hips

The different joints in our body work in different ways. They are designed for the purpose they serve. The hip is a ball and socket joint. This allows for a wide range of movement – flexion, extension, both internal and external rotation, abduction and adduction. In fact, it’s classified as a freely moveable joint. Hence,...

As a PT, I spend a lot of time talking about core muscles, it’s a subject that is far more important than a lot of people realise. Firstly, we’re talking about more than just your abs – a common misconception. Secondly, the core muscles are involved in some way in almost every movement you’ll do with your body. Whether it’s lifting, bending, picking something up or carrying something, understanding more about your core muscles and doing the work to strengthen and protect them will benefit you both inside and outside the gym.

So, let’s look at six things you may not know about core muscles and some of the most useful core exercises for beginners:

1.  The core works as one unit

Which are the core muscles? You’ve got the abdominals to the front, obliques to the side, around the back the erector spinal muscles, a little bit deeper the QL muscles. Then there’s the TVAs and internal obliques as well.

That’s a lot of different...

When it comes to rehabilitating the lower back, there’s a huge amount of information out there. Some of it is valuable, some should be used with caution, and some is just plain wrong. The problem is, that if you try something that’s not recommended for you, it might be that it just doesn’t work, or you could actually exacerbate the problem and make it worse.

That’s why I wanted to do a tutorial that busts some of those commonly held myths about treating low back pain.

MYTH 1: You have to strengthen the muscles of the torso

You might think this one is a slight technicality, but to me it’s important how we define ‘strengthen’ in this context.

If you’re struggling with lower back pain, the last thing you want to do is go to the gym and overwork or fatigue those back muscles by trying to build up the amount of weight you’re able to lift, push or pull. Instead you need to build up the endurance of those core muscles so they work to...