Hip & Ankle Mobility + Lower Body Strength (Using 1 Exercise!)

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Wether you train with your bodyweight or with weights, besides the upper body joint preparation, you need to pay attention to the lower body as well, I think we can agree on that.

In order to be able to do the leg exercises properly, you need mobility and stability, such as with the upper body exercises.

Unfortunately, in general we can say that because of the modern lifestyle, sitting all day, most people really need to work on joint preparation and health.

In my previous videos I have already draw the attention to the importance of the prehab exercises. I presented some highly recommended joint preparation exercises that are really useful for the advanced moves.

And now, its time to talk about the lower body.

But what if I tell you, that you can mobilize and stabilize your ankle, knee and hip with only a couple of exercises while building muscle and strength?

In this video, I’m gonna show you one of my favorite, ultimate leg exercise, which you can use to improve all that I mentioned!

As a calisthenics athlete, you could ask: why should you pay that much attention to lower body mobility and strength?

Well, first of all, the strength of your lower body is not only important for aesthetics but its also important in the health perspective. The harmony between the lower and upper body is important to avoid pain and injuries.

The exercise I’m about to show you will not only help to prevent those problems but it will mobilize your hips, helps to develop a wider straddle that you can benefit from in body lever progressions. The wider your straddle is, the easier the transition will be in different exercises.

The wider straddle looks much better in a planche as well as in a press to handstand.

The proper strength and ankle mobility is essential to the iconic pistol squat, in which the following exercise will help a lot.

But which exercise?

The cossack squat!

When people hear this name for the first time, they probably don’t even know what it’s all about, so let’s see what Cossack squat is.

The Cossack squat is a type of squat, unilateral exercise, which helps to mobilize the ankles and the knees. When you do it propery it creates a complete knee flexion, and it’s great for mobilizing the hips with stretching the adductors and hamstrings. With proper implementation it creates a complete hip flexion as well.

Besides all these it strengthens the lower body muscles greatly, especially the quads, hamstrings and glutes. Of course other muscles also take part in the movement by stabilizing.

I bet lot of you guys dont really, or dont do this exercise at all. Or many people do it as side lunges. If you do those right its all good, but with this one if you have the right stance, it’s easier to concentrate on the key points and you don’t have to deal with standing in the right stance in every rep. The cossack squat is better because it has a low impact on the joints too.

Let’s see the key points:

* Stand in wide stance. Your feet need to look approximately 45 degrees to the side. The straddle is probably going to be wider than you think first.
* From here, squat down to one side with straight back.
* Your heel needs to stay on te ground
* Your knee’s movement should follow the line of your fingers.
* Try to squat down as deep as you can. The best if your hamstrings touch your calf.
* Keep your passive leg straight. You knee needs to look up. You can point your feet or flex.
* Keep your body vertically with straight back.
* You can touch the ground with your hands when you squat down, or elevate your arm in front of your body.

It’s important to squat down only until your body lets you, and don’t bounce. The beauty of this exercise that if you do it consistently, the mobility and strength will improve by themselves.

A common mistake is the narrow stance. If your stance is not wide enough, you won't be able to do the exercise properly. Your knee will move too forward and your heel will elevate.

If your stance is too wide it’s not good either, because your knee will turn inside.

Don’t bend your upper body, keep your back straight and vertical.

If your passive leg’s knee looks forward, you can overstretch the knee joint which can hurt if its not prepared.

As a beginner, you can start this exercise in half range of motion, with assistance, or sitting down, and as I said, the range of motion and strength will improve over time.

The “Your strength training is your correction.” is perfectly fits for this exercise.

* It will improve your deep squat, and strength,
* increase your hip and ankle mobility
* Strengthen and gain your leg muscles,
* And help to fix asymmetries.

All this with one exercise.

If you are interested in more exercises like this and want to prepare your whole body, while achieving the shredded physique of a gymnast, click the link below, and join now on https://gymnasticsmethod.com/start