Double Leg Bridge

NOTES:  Start to push your hips upwards by pressing down with your palms on the floor and as you do so also put a small squeeze on your buttocks.  Do not come up too far!  Only go up to where your back is straight from the hips to the shoulders.  Your head and shoulders stay on the ground.  Pause at the top for at least several seconds, then relax back down again.  At he bottom, make sure you fully relax again, before repeating.

The Double Leg Bridge is sometimes named the ‘Glute Bridge’.  It is a widely used and highly effective strengthening exercise for the muscles of the Posterior Chain.  It it simple to perform for beginners and should form a fundamental part of any athletic training program.  The Posterior chain is a large and important group of muscles that are often overlooked and will degenerate fast if not used regularly – any weakness in your Posterior Chain WILL eventually lead to severe and painful injuries – this is because it is important to maintain a healthy balance in the musculoskeletal system so that everything functions in unison and runs smoothly (like a well maintained car engine).

The muscles of the Posterior Chain are:

Upper Back
Lats
Spinal Erectors
Glutes
Hamstrings
Calves

Now look at that list and ask yourself – Have I ever had a painful back injury, spinal or neck injury?  Do I know anyone who has had these?  If your answer to both questions is no then I would suggest that maybe you are Mr Bean and have no friends?

It seems to me that the most common areas of injury in sports (and quite likely in areas of life outside of sports), are all related somehow to a weakness in the Posterior Chain.  For example, Hamstring injuries are very common with footballers.  Calf injuries are very common with runners.  As an example of non-sport related injury – many sedentary office workers often complain of painful neck and shoulders – this is mostly due to bad posture and bad posture is caused by poor FORM in every physical movement in our daily lives.  Form is an integral part (perhaps the most important part) of the Mojoh Method.

Another important point to note is that in my experience it seems that many injuries to other parts of the body often have their roots in a spinal imbalance.  For example, a friend of mine had a serious foot injury – when he was a child a tractor ran over his foot and it didn’t heal properly.  This resulted in a permanent limp, and of course the human body being the highly adaptable piece of machinery that it is, compensated and adapted, and I guess he just learned to live with it.  But now, approaching his middle years, he has developed a lower back problem, and I don’t believe that anyone (apart from me) has linked this back to his foot injury.  When you limp, you place additional stresses onto one side of your body and this results in a muscular imbalance which effectively contorts the spine – and this imbalance eventually leads to further problems.

And believe it from me (who has had terrible lower back pain), when you get a painful problem in your lower back, everything in your life will become 10 times harder, and 10 times slower.  What then awaits you is an expensive chiropractor or physiotherapist, or a risky operation.  Not to mention the painkillers, muscle relaxants and other pharmaceuticals.  My totally dogged default answer to all of this imbalanced mayhem would be “Just go to the Gym”.

Of course it is my duty at this moment to emphasize that I am speaking generally and from my own experience – and I am absolutely not advising anyone to avoid doctors and pharmaceuticals entirely.  That would be daft.  We all need them sometimes.  They certainly got me out of a few scrapes.

I think what I am trying to advise here above all else is that people in general should give more thought and priority to their lifestyles around sport, exercise and the gym – to be more proactive and less reactive to the physical challenges of everyday life.  Try to be your own Doctor!  Believe it and achieve it!  Use it or lose it!  Seek to make yourself a better, stronger and more balanced person .

As I look around the gyms in modern times I observe that many people seem obsessed with training certain areas of their bodies, at the expense of less obvious (or less easy to train) areas.  This is a big problem, and many people need to be educated about this – about the importance of balance and of not skipping over the tricky bits.

For example, if you ask 100 men in any gym to list their favorite workout routines from most liked first to least liked, how will it look?  Probably something like: 

Chest
Biceps
Triceps
Shoulders
Legs
Back
Abs
Core (Pilates and Stretching)

 If we ask the same question of 100 women, we find something different, probably something like:

Glutes (Bums)
Abs (Tums)
Core (Pilates and Stretching)
Chest
Legs
Back
Biceps
Triceps

For the purposes of this discussion, I am not so interested in the choice differences between men and women.  The key point here is that the Back and Posterior chain muscles are never given the priority they deserve.  Obviously women do much better than men, but they don’t do well enough in my opinion.  Back in the dark ages when I was first frequenting gyms, looking for ways to boost my athletic training, I remember there was always a clear divide between men and women and their gym habits.  Women would be looking to give their breasts a lift or to get pert bottoms or tight tums.  And why not?  We all want to look better and feel better don’t we?  

Let’s be honest about it shall we?  When the average man looks at a woman he is unlikely to look at the shape of her back as a priority, and the same when a women looks at a man.  This is because a strong back and posterior chain is far less visually obvious and far less visually appealing than bulging biceps, pecs like superman, or high standing breasts.

A few years ago I met a guy in a gym and I observed that his form was excellent and that he was always working hard and consistently.  We got talking later in the locker room and what he said to me had a big impact on me and slightly changed my way of thinking.  I has asked him what he was training for?  And his answer was simply that he prioritized health and wellbeing in his life – and that he had decided to only ever train his back and core muscles.  This astounded me.  But I had to agree that it sounded like a very good idea.

We talked about injury prevention and the importance of the spine.  And I related this back to my own lower back problems earlier in my life.  For this reason I had already started to increase the amount of Back and Pilates exercises during my gym visits and had begun to build on my knowledge and repertoire – mixing up my old school experience with modern ideas and modern equipment.  And so I became keenly interested in Balance and Symmetry, and when I married this together with my lifelong obsession for Technique and Form, I began to realize that I had formulated a new type of training method which seemed to encompass everything from technique to injury to psychology to diet.  This is how the Mojoh Method came to be.