The Russian Twist with the RMT® Club: Get Your Club Now
These hip flexor exercises will add an element of diversity to your core strength training while improving your range of motion capabilities
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This is a WeckMethod RMT® Club exercise called the Russian Twist.
Here's what it looks like:Your back is nice and straight and flat. We don't want any rounding what so ever. Your heels are digging into the ground, hamstrings engaged. Club is up here. I'm going to rotate without touching the ground, and rotate without touching the ground. You'll notice that the top hand coming to the opposite side is more challenging. So you definitely want to switch hand positions here to create that initial rotation. That's sort of our beginner version.
Now to progress that, what we're going to do is we're just going to lift one leg. And with all that engagement through the hip flexors and the Quadratus lumborum of this position when a true back without all that rounding, we're going to add to it with the rectus femoris (that's the hip flexor that's in the quadricep muscle group in your thighs). So when we lift that one side, and we do the rotation, now you're going to really feel that front muscle, that top rectus fremoris engaged for that hip flexon. And again, keep everything nice and true.
Obviously you'll do the other side [for non-dominant side training]. To progress it even further, we're going to raise both legs in the air. And you really want to keep it straight, without a lot of this motion over here [shifting around]. You want to go slow at first, don't go faster than you can if you're going to break form.
So with both legs up, I'm nice and flat through the back. I'm rotating and rotating. There's a balance challenge on this. One of the advantages of doing it with the RMT® Club is the leverage that it provides. I'm not in here like a medicine ball. I have that extra, additional leverage that gives a little bit more pull so that I’m getting that rotational strength. As I increase the speed, I have that internal shift that [BOOM], gives me additional momentum that I have to stop. So that's some advantages.
Okay so now, another variation of this exercise is that I can now tap the ground. And so what we're doing when we're tapping the ground is we're creating greater range of motion, and what you'll feel, the difference between here where I'm decelerating, before it taps and where I actually tap it iIs that when I tap it, I'll feel the hip flexors more like the Tensor Fascia Latae (that's the outside muscles here that come in with this fascia that connects down the leg and that helps also flex the hip). Because the benefits of this exercise is the core stability, hip mobility, and rotational strength so that we can run faster, be more athletic. So when I'm tapping that ground, it's more range of motion and I'll feel it outside/in those hip flexors, that aspect of it. And when I'm not tapping the ground I'm going to feel more in the obliques and that abdominal strength through the core (transverses and the obliques). Still doing hip flexors, it's just a little different emphasis.
So like all of the exercises that we do, we want to translate it to ground based movement. A great way to take that exercise and bring it up to standing is to simply do this high knee or high foot like we use to say, marching. And you can travel with that. Use the mechanics of this counter-rotation from the shoulder and the hips. Because that exercise through it's rotation gives us that rotational stability. Here. Here. Here. Here. So use that to prime the body to now move better on the ground.
That's our Russian Twist with the RMT® Club
