Muscles Worked: Literally every muscle along the back of the body and many in front coordinate to complete a bridge. The calves, hamstrings, glutes, lower back, lats, and traps primarily maintain the bridge position while the deep abdominal muscles, shoulder muscles, and quadriceps stabilize the position, acting like the struts above and below a suspension bridge.
Why Bridge? The benefits of the bridge are wide reaching. Few exercises can approximate the holistic benefits to all muscular, skeletal, and organ systems. Proper bridging can prevent and rehabilitate back injuries, increase spinal flexibility, improve digestion, stretch the abdomen, chest, and hip flexors, extend the hips, and even increase the libido. The bridge is a fundamental power exercise.
The Matt Furey Bridge: What I call the Matt Furey bridge consists of touching, or attempting to touch, one's nose to the ground in a bridge hold for time while deep breathing. Furey refers to this form of bridging practice as the king of bodyweight exercises. The incorporation of deep nasal breathing in this position, also known as bridging chi kung, leads to better flexibility, pain tolerance, focus, and relaxation under physical/mental stress. A trainee should strive for 32 slow breaths (2 second inhale, 2 second exhale) in the bridge position, with nose touching the ground. One can use hands for assistance depending on strength. In order to extract maximum benefit from the hold, the trainee must strive to stretch as fully as possible and extend the hips and back by actively tensing the glutes and pushing out the chest. It is also critically important to hold the pose long past the point of discomfort to the point where pain subsides to numbness, then relax in that state. A proper workout with this hold results in shaky legs, sore glutes, and a feeling of depletion throughout the spine and neck.
The Convict Conditioning Bridge: The bridge taught in Convict Conditioning, also known as the gymnastic bridge, consists of dynamically pushing up into the bridge position on the hands and feet from the ground. For numerous reasons, this method is not recommended by this author, as dynamic bridging requires less tension and therefore confers less strength benefits. The one exception to this rule regards wall walking and falling backwards into an arms extended bridge. This variation greatly conditions the strength and flexibility of the back and shoulders. For those who want to train this movement, try it as a finisher for the Matt Furey bridge for a couple sets of 10-15 slow reps.
Advanced Variations: The one armed, one legged, and one arm/one leg bridges constitute the pinnacle of bridging strength. From a combat perspective they serve little use, but may help to break the monotony of training.
Likely Results of Bridging: The benefits of bridging are less physically apparent than those of other exercises. A variety of body types can practice and benefit from the bridge. One can conceive of bridging as a body type amplifier. Smaller individuals are likely to be made more compact, limber, and flexible by the bridge. Larger individuals are likely to grow more muscular and powerful from the bridge. One's absolute body mass will determine which results are likely. Unlike many bodyweight exercises, heavier individuals are not disadvantaged in the bridge and may actually gain more absolute strength than relative strength through its practice. Lighter individuals will gain proportionally less absolute strength benefit, but will nevertheless increase relative strength and flexibility.
Bridging will thicken the muscles along the upper back and spine, resulting in a more durable, injury resistant back and neck. Strengthening the spine also removes an important weak link in full body strength allowing for greater strength in all bodyweight and weighted movements.
No comments:
Post a Comment