Great Rollout Progression: 1 Leg Slideouts

I hope everyone had a good weekend and enjoyed the Super Bowl. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t still a little salty that the Patriots weren’t playing, but I must say it was a good game and I enjoyed watching it…especially the halftime show. Wow.

Anyway, today I want to share a nice core exercise that I’ve been using a little bit in my training: 1 Leg Slideouts.

Here it is in action.

This is a great advanced core exercise that serves as a good progression from ab wheel rollouts. While rollouts focus more on the anterior core and train the core via anti-extension, this adds a unique challenge for the rotary core and trains anti-rotation too.

I’m in that rollout “no man’s land” where regular kneeling rollouts are too easy, but I’m not a huge fan of standing rollouts because I tend to feel them too much in lower back and shoulders, so this single leg version is a good happy-medium. They’re much harder than regular kneeling rollouts, but not as hard as standing rollouts (and with much less of an upper body emphasis).

Normally using sliders is harder than using an ab wheel, but with this variation I find it actually makes it a slight bit easier because you can space your hands out more for a wider base. An ab wheel works fine too though.

These are a lot harder than they might look so make sure you’ve mastered regular rollouts before giving them a go. The nice thing about them is that they’re much more self-limiting than regular rollouts. With regular rollouts it’s easy to roll out further than you’re capable of controlling with your core, which can put your lower back at risk. With these though, the anti-rotational component makes it such that you really can’t go out further than you’re capable of handling because you’ll lose your balance.

You can also do something similar with one leg as opposed to one arm, but again, that’s more than I can handle so I’m not at that point. If you’re into learning that, look into Ross Enamait’s website, as he’s a rollout whiz.

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Also be sure to check out this weekend’s Good Reads if you missed it.