Jonathan Neal Fitness

My newest favorite little quad burner... 🔥🦵

With all the moving parts in this exercise, you may be surprised to find out that the back foot and leg are the real focal points here. 🔎

The movement itself is just a slight variation of the classic squat press, elevating the front foot at bit and using the step stance. However, as noted above, the thing you want to be thinking about is driving through the back big toe and getting full extension of your back leg coupled with a strong engagement of the glute on that side.

The idea here is to really find foundation for the powerful overhead press by engaging your entire kinetic chain at once, all the way from the ground up.

Give it a try and see if you can feel that glute squeeze at the top! 💪😎✌️

My FAVORITE Hip Hinge Exercise...

Cross 1 Leg Deadlift

The glute max operates in both hip extension and rotation, so by coming a bit across on the way down and correcting back to square on the way up we effectively work the glute in both functions simultaneously.

Here I am doing this as more of a "power" variation with an explosive clean, but it can also be done slowly as a more traditional RDL. Either way, be sure to concentrate on feeling the glutes do as much of the work as possible.

💪😎👍

Thigh Band 90° Turns

Pretty self-explanatory here. Band is low on the thighs and you are taking big, slow, steady 90° turns back and forth through a semi-circle shape.

Be sure to stretch that band long and control with a slow tempo.

Train Your Core While Standing!

..not laying down doing "crunches". While there may be some limited use for such work, it is not nearly as valuable as getting your core to work in more realistic circumstances.

This means standing up, using cross-body movements, and ensuring that load is significant enough to make it challenging. Here I show 2 easily accessible options that you can try out today and see the difference.

Also, when we train the core this way, we get it working in conjunction with the rest of the body rather than in isolation. The core is meant to integrate the upper and lower body, so it is best to train it in that regard.

The 3 Planes of Motion

Sagittal - Forward and Up and Down

Frontal - Side to Side

Transverse - Rotational

All 3 Planes are important, and if you neglect any of them you are leaving gaps in your training. Real Life requires proficiency in all the ways we can move, so it behooves us to model our training around real Life.

The HV Side Lunge ↔️

The side (lateral) lunge is one place where the horizontal vector really shines. The main purpose of the side lunge is to challenge your body in the frontal plane, which means side-to-side movements. Of course there is a sagittal plane component of squatting up and down, but the lateral movement is really the reason to use this exercise.

Now, if we load a horizontal movement with a vertical resistance vector, such as holding a dumbbell, it will mainly add extra challenge to the sagittal plane portion of the exercise. However, when we load it horizontally as shown here, we naturally challenge the frontal plane portion more. This ensures we are getting the most value out of our side lunges.

As always, give it a try yourself and feel the difference! 💪😎👍

The HV Forward Lunge ↔️

This is just a standard lunge, but you can see that we have replaced carrying a dumbbell with holding onto a cable or band. This makes it so that the resistance is working in a different direction (vector).

This fundamentally changes the way that force is transmitted through your kinetic chain, giving you an extra focus on the quads. Be sure to think about sinking your knee forward on the way down, and then driving through your heel to push backwards and come up.

Try it out and let me know how it feels for you! 💪😎👍