The BEST Total Body Exercise (You’re NOT Doing!)

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with the hips literally and figuratively at the center of everything we do it goes without saying today’s exercise the most important one that you’re not doing is going to involve the hips let me show you what I mean [Music] today what’s up guys Jeff Cavalier athleen x. com the most important exercise that you’re probably not doing is the one I’m going to show you here today now what got me to thinking about this and the reason why I thought it was worth a video to instruct and show you this was the uh video I did over the weekend which was the top 10 biggest workout fails and one of the ones we covered in there was the rpdl which I call it right and I showed you the importance of the the hip hinge right when we hinge our hips we can hinge straight down like that here or we can hinge with a backward uh movement of the hips as well that’s a critical point and I and so much so that I thought why don’t I show you how to actually train that and how much of a carryover that actually has and we do that with our bands now if you guys don’t have the ath elastics bands you can find them over at our website in our training bands uh section but basically they’re the big thick resistance bands enough to resist your own body weight and we already have one hooked around something sturdy okay this is around a swift machine it could be around a squat rack something that’s not going to move now I’m going to demonstrate with two bands if you’re just starting out and you’re going to use this act this exercise as an activator right a glute activator and you’re going to want to use one band if you’re going to try to use it as a strengthener you’re going to use two bands all right so basically we just take it around put it right inside of itself like that and it’s anchored around now we take both of them and we’re going to step inside like this put them around our hips and then kneel on something that’s going to tolerate you know our knees so basically the importance here guys is two things number one you want to feel what it’s like to hinge at the hip with the backward movement of the hips like I showed you in that second demonstration so think about it when you’re going to do a squat when you’re going to do an RDL when you’re going to do anything even a bent over row you shouldn’t always be bending straight from the hips which is what a lot of guys will do especially with the bent row with a bent row you want to get that forward with the with the trunk but backwards with the hips that will set up that arch in your low back right here that you need for a bent row if we go into a squat right it should feel as if the first move is down and back so when I resist against this band here if I let it go it’s going to pull me back and down okay same thing for the RDL it’s going to pull me back and down that’s the perfect position so number one it’s going to teach you what it’s like to first hip hinge backwards as opposed to all in the forward Direction it’s going to protect your back as we talked about in that other video the second and most important thing here is glute activation that’s so important to everything we do and I’ll demonstrate soon as we’re done here after I let it go the exercise is contract the glutes to squeeze your hips forward and again with two of these bands on here that’s a lot of resistance wanting to pull me back down here right right so we get up up tall we’re going to let it drop back and then squeeze forward all through the glutes Let It Drop back squeeze forward all through the glutes you got to hold it again this is a great activator right for the guys that have glute Amnesia which we talk about all the time underactive glutes lead to a whole mess of biomechanical issues between how the hips function from our feet up through our hips to our arms so if you have bad me mechanics right here in the center guys you’re going to have bad mechanics overall and it’s going to impact you in a ways that could lead you to get injured through any of your exercises upper or lower body so again let it drop down and then pull through again Contracting with the glutes if you look at it from the side you’ll see again that I’m dropping down just letting the band take me down and then as I come up I’m driving straight through the glutes against the resistance of this band you want to make it a little bit more applicable to what you’re doing take a pair of mock dumbbells just to feel it put the dumbbells up here put a bar up here an empty bar feel what it’s like to go down into the squat the right way come up and out of it squeezing through the glutes take your dumbbells RDL let them come straight down to the mat in front of you okay squeeze through and drive the hips through so barbell row again come down in here feel it like that okay what the feeling is like and then of course just the exercise itself will drive you back through and use your glutes finally guys what I wanted to show you is when you translate this to an exercise like a step up if I come up here and I put my foot up on my Surface to do my Ben step up or whatever I’m doing what is the move the move is up and then drive through the hip everything we do guys functionally in the weight room once you’re on your feet athletically right the athletic position we call it the breakdown position is here right hips back you don’t see a guy in an athletic position like this because what will happen is they their center of gravity is all forward as soon as someone hits them here they’re falling over but if my center of gravity is back and my hands are out that’s a good athletic position but if you don’t train that way you’re never going to ingrain it and that’s the important thing here guys engrain this movement use this to wake your ass up like I say wake your glutes up as an activator with one band or if you want to incorporate it as a strength training exercise then start doing it with two guys we train athletes here but they all don’t have to be professional athletes okay a lot of you guys that are out there watching just compete in everyday life right wanting to get better at what you do want them to feel better at what you you know how you feel today that’s what it’s all about here and I think at the core of it all it’s learning the principles of training like an athlete that you then apply to your everyday life and it has a long-term effect on how much better you’ll feel and how much stronger you’ll be that’s what we do at athlet next. com and that’s what we do in our 90-day training program so if you haven’t already gotten it guys then head over there right now and grab it I’ll see you guys back here in just a few days in the meantime let me know if you find this helpful try it out I’m tell you’re going to see right away what it feels like to actually get those glutes going all right guys be back here in a few days a [Music]