C.A.R. – Hip mobility in the side position

This C.A.R. exercise is a simplified version of the C.A.R – Hip mobility quadruped position. As you are lying on your side and your hip has a direct contact to the ground, this position prevends you moving your hip to the side while you are doing the rotation. To increase the level of this exercise we clamp a tennis ball to the back of the knee, enabling a more controlled movement of the hip joint. Try not to drop the tennis ball during the exercise.

How to do it?

• Starting point
• Go into side position
• One leg close to the floor is starched
• Bend the other leg and clamp a tennis ball to the back of the knee
• Knees lie on top of each other
• The arm close to the floor is stretched
• Put your head down on your arm
• The other arm is placed at shoulder height slightly in front of the body and stabilizes your position
• You reach a stable position if you try to reach into the ground with your fingers
• Before we start, built up tension in the whole body
• Movement
• Move your knee parallel to the floor forward to your chest
• Open your hip in external rotation –by moving the knee upwards that it points to the sky. Your foot sole points towards the stretched leg
• At the same time, try to hold the tension in your knee towards the chest
• When you try to increase the external rotation, take care that your whole body is in tension and does not move with the movement – otherwise it has no trainings effect. Your front arm helps you to be in the position
• Turn your foot outwards away – internal rotation – and try to keep the knee in the same position as before.
• Your foot sole points away from the back now
• Go down with the leg to get into the starting position
• Do this exercise up to 5 times per leg and then switch to the other one

Summary
This exercise is a nice warm up for an intensive flexibility workout. We recommend you to do this exercise slowly and with full control of the movement. We want to train the strength in the joint as well as the stretch. If you feel that you lose the control. If you notice that you are losing control and only control the movement again after a short moment, reduce the maximum rotation a little and work slowly towards it.