This video demonstrates the Reverse Clamshell exercise, performed with a yoga block or household substitute to maintain proper femur alignment during the movement.
The focus is on activating the gluteal muscles, referred to as the "back pocket muscles," while avoiding overreliance on the TFL and IT band.
This exercise is recommended as a warm-up and cool-down for runners, as well as a go-to movement when symptoms arise, since the goal is to activate and distribute load properly rather than rest.
As strength improves, the progression removes the block entirely, allowing the hip abductors to stabilize the leg independently while the femoral head rotates freely in the socket.
Video Transcript:
Felt pretty effective. Okay, so here we are doing your Reverse Clamshell. You've got a yoga block here but it can be a balled up towel, a folded sweatshirt, whatever.
But basically you've got your femur that's horizontal and sort of parallel with the other and you're gonna be pivoting through this femoral axis right through here. So go ahead, and you're gonna do some of these guys.
You get a good relaxed foot, and you're leading with that heel, and you're playing with the height at which you lift up that heel so as to make sure that you're focusing on those back pocket muscles and not blowing past using them and then going to the front TFL muscle, which is part of that IT band. Which right now that's not an issue for you, but it can be and we don't want to promote that. So the focus is to really get those back pocket muscles on.
So you'll be doing this, you'll be doing, you know, whether you're doing 10 to 15 reps or you're doing you know 30 seconds instead of counting.
Let's get you two or three of these as a warm-up piece before running and after running and anytime that you're actually feeling your symptoms. So it shouldn't be like, oh, I'm feeling my symptoms I need to rest. It should be I need to activate in order to right size those loads on the hip joint.
Eventually, we're gonna get to the point where you we can remove this and you can hover that leg right where it was and you can now use those hip AB ductors so that holding it up, it's steadying it and now that ball is rotating in that socket on its own and under its own volition.