So last week we talked about improving the canter and we discussed the QL muscle. QL is a muscle of the back that is involved in both front to back stability as well as lateral stability. In simple terms it keeps your torso in balance. This was discussed in last weeks blog about how we need to keep stable through the whole of our torso in order to Canter effectively –without bumping and/or sliding.
Hopefully if you have issues with your canter you have been trying the QL releases that I took you through last week.
Now we are going to start strengthening this area.
First a little test of its current strength -Side plank.
This is commonly done as a core exercise and indeed your QL is vital for core strength. The QL underneath will be fighting gravity to hold you up. How long can you hold a side plank for? If you feel this in your shoulder you are not using your QL to hold you up-probably suggesting it isn't strong enough yet.
Then move onto this Side Plank Dips to help strengthen it.
