How to do the Low Bridge in Movement Training

The Low Bridge is often challenging for students when they first start learning it (myself included).

It offers a number of physical benefits and should be incorporated into your Locomotion Practice for a number of reasons.

Firstly, it promotes extension of the spine, in particular the thoracic upper back (T-Spine) which most of us benefit from working on to reverse the rigidity caused by so much sitting and hunching in modern living.

It also encourages us to open up our hips and develop greater knees over toes leg strength which is also highly beneficial to a robust functional body.

I made this video covering the key problems and their solutions for developing your Low Bridge....

The most common mistakes and problems when performing the Low Bridge are:-

1. Incorrect Positioning

The perform the Low Bridge efficiently, we need to ensure that we dont place the hands too far away from the feet when initiating the rotation. If you do, it makes the rotation much more difficult.

Secondly, we need to focus on shifting our weight forward with the sissy squat to send our hips forward over our feet. This helps support more of our weight with our legs and makes the hands far more lighter when it comes to the rotation.

2. Lacking Strength

Unlike the high bridge which is more dependent on upper back and shoulder mobility, the low bridge requires far more leg strength. So, it may be that you need to work on your sissy squats to build this up in order to perform the low bridge.

I demonstrate how to train the sissy squat in the above video.

3. Lacking Mobility

Although you don't need as much hip, upper back or shoulder mobility as in the high bridge, you still need enough to ensure you can extend backwards far enough to make the low bridge rotation.

Specific hip opening drills such as the Diagonal Stretch (a fantastic loaded mobility drill) and also T-Spine opening drills (such as the one I do on the foam roller with a dumbbell in the above video) will help with this.

4. Lacking Confidence

Making the rotation without being able to see the ground is scary at first, so I demonstrate in the above video a technique to get into the middle low bridge position without the risk of falling on the inbound or outbound rotation. 

This drill will help you overcome any fear of falling.

The Low Bridge is a staple in Locomotion and offers many integrations with other skills when it comes to building combinations and sequences.

I offer an even more detailed breakdown of it and it's many variations in my online Locomotion Flow 2.0 course which has this and dozens of other skills and sequences to learn.

It's well worth your time learning the Low Bridge, so happy moving and I hope this information helped!

Aaron