Julie's Garage Gym

Active Flexibility movements are designed to improve soft tissue extensibility in all planes of motion, while activating the opposing muscle being stretched.
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Dynamic Flexibility movements use the force production of a muscle and the body’s momentum to take a joint through it’s full, available range of motion.
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Here are three great Active and Dynamic Hip Flexibility movements to help warm up your body and prepare it for activity.

1️⃣ Hip Swings
2️⃣ Half Circles
3️⃣ Alternating Reverse Lunge with Torso Rotation

Be sure to breathe continuously throughout and always work within YOUR pain-free available range.

Do you have a Swiss (or Stability) Ball lying around your house collecting dust? Maybe you bought one a while ago with good intentions to use but simply forgot... or maybe you just never learned how to get the most out of it!

As mentioned in yesterday’s post, using a Swiss Ball adds instability to basic exercises, stimulating and conditioning your deep core muscles. Here’s a great total body workout using a set of dumbbells and pumped up ball!


Perform 12-15 Repetitions of each exercise. Repeat the entire circuit 3-5 times.

1️⃣ Alternating Side Lunges with Rotation
2️⃣ Chest Flys
3️⃣ Reverse Flys
4️⃣ Hamstring Curls to Bridge
5️⃣ Push + Pull Plank

As always, work within YOUR pain-free range, and meet your body where it is.

Bridges are a very basic yet effective way to activate your glutes, hamstrings, and abdominal muscles. They are a foundational core movement that puts your glutes under constant tension while lengthening (opening up) the hip flexors to improve and facilitate hip extension.

This video demonstrates a straight leg bridge variation, along with a single-leg progression, that allows the hamstrings to contract without shortening the muscles. Using a Swiss Ball adds instability to a basic bridge, stimulating and conditioning your deep core muscles improving spinal stability.

If you’re looking for a way to tighten up your backside, or for an effective glute activator before hitting the weights, Bridges are a great technique that works!

As always, listen to your body and work within YOUR pain-free available range.

For any of you who often sit at a desk or in a car, or occasionally experience low back pain, your Hamstrings and Hips could likely use some TLC.

With the assistance of a yoga strap, these stretches can help lengthen all three hamstring heads, (semitendinosus, semimembranosus, and biceps femoris), as well as the inner and outer hip muscles.

1️⃣ Active Straight Leg Raise
2️⃣ Lateral Hamstring Stretch
3️⃣ Medial Hamstring Stretch

As always, be sure to breathe deeply and work within YOUR pain-free available range.