Today’s guest post comes from Cressey Sports Performance – Massachusetts coach, Josh Zall.

The 1-Leg Supine Bridge with Hamstrings Catch is an exercise we’ve been prescribing more frequently of late with a lot of our more advanced athletes at Cressey Sports Performance. A dynamic “drop-catch” offers an array of benefits for all athletes regardless of their chosen athletic endeavor.

Important Considerations:

When an athlete who is young, untrained, or generally hypermobile dives into this movement without the ability to adequately decelerate, it can be too challenging to drive a valuable adaptation. For an exercise that starts in a static position and quickly transitions into a dynamic movement that requires coordination, making sure the athlete is proficient in general hamstring strength and motor control is key.

The ability to get into and hold a single-leg bridge is the only true prerequisite for prescribing this movement in a program.

Benefits:

The exposure to a co-contraction is one of the biggest prizes of this movement. A co-contraction is a simultaneous contraction of the agonist and antagonist muscles to stabilize a joint against opposing forces, and the ability to create a co-contraction is a key for joint and connective tissue health for athletes. With hamstring strains plaguing athletes of all sports, having the ability to create a unilateral co-contraction and create concentric activity with the hamstring in a lengthened position is vital for lower limb health (think initial contact and take-off phase of a sprint; front foot strike in a pitcher’s delivery; or any side shuffles).

Something important to keep in mind is that co-contractions are not a central nervous system phenomenon, so exposing your body to situations where you need to co-contract while fatigued is important for connective tissue health. With that being said, this is an exercise that I typically program for an athlete as accessory work or in a movement (sprint/agility) day in their program – usually for 4-8 reps per set.

A simple way to regress to this movement would be to not allow for excessive knee extension on the catch. The opposite would be true when progressing this movement — “catching” at end-range or close to end-range knee extension would increase the difficulty.

Enjoy!

About the Author

Josh Zall serves as a Strength and Conditioning coach at Cressey Sports Performance. He earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Sport and Movement Science at Salem State University, and has internship coaching experience from both CSP-MA and Saint John’s Preparatory Academy in Danvers, MA.