Single Leg Circle

Let's take a look at single leg circles, a seemingly simple movement, but actually quite complex. We should have freedom in the hip and stability in the core. There is an abdominal focus, which is tricky to get at times. Let's explore the movement. So go ahead and lie down on your back. And I'm going to settle myself in so that it feels like my head is heavy.

My rib cage is grounded. My pelvis is grounded. So my three body weights are grounded. You could have your arms down by your side. That's going to be slightly harder or your arms open wide, that's going to be slightly easier.

I'm gonna suggest palms up today either when you choose. Stretch two legs to straight and try to relax through the legs, feeling the backs of the thighs are ideally resting on the mat behind you and the pelvis stays grounded. There is a little bit of space underneath the low back because we're in neutral. You can keep that space. So feel grounding through the head the ribs and the pelvis, bring your legs to parallel alignment, and just float one leg up for me.

Flex the ankles. So I'm looking for stability in my spine and mobility or a release in the hip. We always do inward circles first. So let's take an inward circle, and we can pause at the top. I would use an in house. And then an exhale to do another one.

So here, the idea here is that I'm keeping my whole body quite stable as my leg rotates or floats or swings around. Let's go outward now. We're gonna go out to the side and come across. So a lot of times people will get popping or snapping in the hips. That's usually an indication that we're not stabilizing well enough.

And oftentimes, the person is lifting the leg too high. So what we wanna be aware of is that the pelvis stays grounded and you're only lifting as high as you can keep your pelvis grounded. I'll show the other side for a few moments. Again, the pelvis is heavy, the rib cage, the head, arms this time are gonna be down by my side. Shoulder blades grounded. Let's go palms down.

Bottom leg is pointed through the foot. Top leg, the ankle is flexed. We're gonna go inward first, easy hip circle, and then easy hip circle. So you can do, say, 6 in each direction or 3 breaths if you're doing an inhale and an exhale. But really, we wanna make sure that we're managing the body and we're doing the movement with good body mechanics, regardless of how many repetitions you do.

I'm gonna do one more here, ease through my hip, point the foot, lower the leg down, take a beat to relax. I'm gonna roll over onto my side and Single leg circles. Thanks for playing.