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Technique

  1. Go on all fours and engage your Abs (suck your bellybutton upward).
  2. Lift one leg off the ground and extend at the hip and at the knee at the same time, so as to drive your foot backward until your leg is fully extended.
  3. Pause slightly at the top, then reverse the motion slowly and repeat for the number of reps, then perform on the other side.

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Form tips

  • Keep your Abs engaged and a posterior Pelvic tilt: do not let your back arch when kicking back. Arching the lower back makes the movement a lot easier to perform, but also a lot less effective. When done properly, you should feel your posterior upper thighs working.
  • Keep your torso and hips parallel with the ground: do not let the working side open upward.
Logging: Repetitions done on one side.

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Muscles

Strength

Primary

  • Glutes
  • Hamstrings

Secondary

  • Hip adductors
  • Gluteus maximus
  • Semitendinosus
  • Semimembranosus
  • Biceps femoris (long)

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Equipment

Ground (hands or body)
Ground (hands or body)

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Appears in

Joint movements
Hipextension
trains stretches

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Regressions

e0wk

Donkey kick

Beginner
e16v

Standing front split

Novice
e1bv

Glute kickback machine

Beginner
e0m9

Partner one-leg shoulder plank

Beginner
w01g

Lunge tap and open

Intermediate
e0in

Bird dog

Beginner
Want to log this exercise? Open it in Calistree. Text and images are used under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; the video plays from the original source.