Pilates side hip raise

Pilates is great for shaping your body, balancing your muscles and making you more flexible. It gives attention to your stabilizing muscles, which are often ignored by other exercise styles. It does some strengthening, especially when it comes to your trunk section, but its primary purpose is not to make your legs strong.
The hips are where most females store their fat, so we’ve got some easy exercises to get that area into shape…

Beginner Level of Difficulty
The side plank hip raise is a beginner core exercise. This exercise strengthens the muscles of the core with most of the body weight placed on the underside obliques.

MUSCLES ENGAGED

Obliques
Many people put a lot of focus on working their abs but forget their surrounding neighbors; the oblique muscles. Obliques serve as stabilizers, and are used in almost every physical activity. Exercising your obliques should be a very important part of your workout program.

Hamstrings
The hamstrings play a crucial role in many daily activities, such as, running, jumping, walking and cycling. Strengthening your hamstring muscles help to protect your knees from injury by absorbing the stress placed on the knee. Weak hamstrings can lead to knee injury.

Exercise Instructions

Step 1
Start in a side plank position. Be sure that your elbow is directly underneath your shoulder and your feet are stacked on top of eachother.

Step 2
Lower your body down until just before your hip touches the ground.

Step 3
Raise your body back up into a side plank position using your underside obliques.

we think you are ready for level 2