Leg swing
Muscles worked : Hips, mobility · Glutes, hamstrings
How to do it
- Stand sideways to a wall or a chair back, one hand resting on it.
- Shift your weight onto the inside leg, leaving the other free to swing.
- Swing the free leg front to back, without forcing at the end of the range.
- Build the range gradually across the repetitions, keeping the pelvis still.
- Switch sides halfway through the time.
Common mistakes
- Pelvis tipping to reach further, instead of letting the hip do the work alone.
- Going to maximum range immediately, when it is meant to open up gradually.
- Lower back arching as the leg travels backward.
Where you should feel it
A hip loosening up, with no marked muscular effort. This is getting moving, not strengthening: if it pulls hard, the range is already too big for the start of a session.
Range of motion
Go as far as the pelvis stays still. Today’s range is meant to grow during the set itself, exactly as with cat-cow.
Tempo and breathing
A steady, controlled swing, never thrown. The movement stays driven, not left to momentum.
What works, precisely
The hip flexors and the gluteus maximus alternate dynamic contraction and lengthening, while the standing leg and the core stabilize the pelvis. The work is on hip joint mobility, not on strength.
Movement mechanics
Alternating open-chain hip flexion and extension in the sagittal plane, with no load. The controlled ballistic movement prepares the range that lunges and squats will then use under load.
Benefits
- Prepares the hip before any leg work, which no other warm-up in this library did — they were all upper body.
- Done anywhere with a simple support, in thirty seconds a side.
- Opens the hip range used by the lunges, squats and step-ups that follow.
Precautions
No jerking at the end of the range: this is a driven swing, not a throw. If the hip catches, reduce the range rather than pushing through.