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Here are our “Top 3 Leg Exercises for Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation.”
– Nordic Curl
– Natural Leg Extension
– Copenhagen Adductor Exercise

Check out the instructions, Give it a go and let us know how you went?

 

Transcript

– Hi, I’m Aaron and this is Jessica and we’re from Fit Clinic.

We’re going to show you a few different exercises to help you remain injury-free either in the gym or playing a sport, especially considering it’s coming into the preseason, or we are in the preseason for a lot of winter sports.

The exercises that we’ll run you through are the Nordic Curl, the Copenhagen Adductor Exercise, and the Natural Leg Extension.

Now I don’t really know why they’re called, or have names based around Scandinavian names, but I think it might be due to the fact that they do a lot of winter sports, a lot of skating, skiing, and they’re really good exercises to provide tissue or muscle strength, joint resilience, to make sure that they remain injury-free.

So the first one that we’re gonna go through is a Nordic Curl. So if you don’t have a device like us or you can’t put your legs in something to hold your ankles still, then this is where you use a partner to do a lot of these. And we’ll show you the partner variation. So Jessica’s set herself up. There are two variations here. The first one is lowering yourself down all the way. Now we’re trying to keep ourselves straight from your knee to your shoulder and straight as possible on the way down. And when you can’t hold yourself any longer, then you let yourself go. And this is why we’ve got the ball here. In this case because it provides a bit of a softer landing, but that doesn’t really matter if you’re out on the field and you’re with a partner. So you’re trying to go as low as possible. Often we don’t, or we may not start that low, but we can get there over time with a lot of practice.

Now we’re gonna go through the second variation which is pulling yourself back up. So you’re trying to go to the edge of where you might tip over and need to stop yourself using your hands, but you’re going to try to pull yourself back. So what the purpose of this is the muscle is lengthening while it’s under load, and what that does is again, provides that tendon and joint strength. When the muscles are under load and they’re lengthening, that’s the type of action, the eccentric action, that is going to be one of the best types of actions for injury prevention and also for rehabilitation, and just make sure that you can play longer and be stronger.

So our second option is the natural leg extension. That’s the reverse of what we’ve just done. So we’re coming in straight. You don’t typically need a partner for this one because you’re just on the ground. So you’re doing the reverse. From the knees to the shoulders you’re keeping yourself straight, hands wherever you see fit. And you’re trying to keep yourself straight, lowering down to where you can and then pushing your feet into the ground, and then you’re trying to propel yourself back up. So it’s the muscles lengthening while it’s under load when you’re going backwards. So that’s the natural leg extension.

And the third one, we can either use a bench in this situation or you can use a partner as well. So if we’re using the bench, you’re on the side and you’re holding yourself up here, using the bench. But if you don’t have a bench, then you’re just going to use a partner. So if you’ve got a team sport and you want to do these as a preventative exercise, then use a partner. So we’ll demonstrate now. So you just grab underneath the leg, typically at the ankle and the knee, and it’s the top adductor, top groin area, that’s doing a lot of the work.

So there are three main exercises that are going to make sure that you remain injury free, you can be stronger, play longer, and just overall fitter and healthier. Thanks. Have a great day!