In this week’s installment of “Exercise of the Week,” I want to introduce one of my favorite “combo” drills for hip mobility and core stability. I actually came up with the lateral lunge with band overhead reach myself in the summer of 2012 as I was thinking up ways for our throwers to have better rotary and anterior core stability as they rode their back hips down the mound during their pitching delivery. I introduced the exercise in phase 2 of The High Performance Handbook, and got several emails from customers who commented on just how much they liked it. Give it a shot!

The name of the game with this exercise is “bang for your buck.” You’re getting anterior core stability that’ll help you prevent the lower back from slipping into too big an arch. You’re getting rotary stability that’ll help prevent excessive rotation of your spine. You’re getting hip mobility that’ll enable you to get into new ranges of motion. And, you’ll build lower body frontal plane stability so that you can perform outside of just the sagittal (straight-ahead) plane.

I’ll usually do three sets of 6-8 reps per side. Enjoy!