By Lisa Snow, NYC Personal Trainer

The basic, 2 leg bridge is a wonderful exercise for beginners of all ages, but people master it quickly.

You know you’ve learned all you can from the 2 leg bridge when you can lift your hips all the way up (so that there is a straight line from your belly through your hips to your thighs).  Once the basic bridge gets too easy, many people stop doing bridges completely and move on to squats, deadlifts, or lower body weight machines.  That might be a mistake – there’s more you can get out of the bridge!  There is a slightly harder kind of bridge popularized by sports physical therapist Gray Cook, which trainers affectionately call the Cook Bridge: a single leg variation.  You either hold the other knee with both hands (intermediate) or squeeze a tennis ball between the top thigh and the ribs (advanced).

Then you lift the hips as high as you can.  You don’t need to hold still for long at the top.  Just go high and low for 10-15 reps, then make sure you repeat on the other leg. The Cook Bridge is a high bang for your buck exercise, working 2 muscle groups in a single move.  It strengthens the glute muscles (toning your butt!) while also stretching the hip flexors (improving hip mobility).  For healthy people, mastering the Cook Bridge can help you improve your squat and deadlift, since hip mobility is crucial to both these exercises.  For people who’ve had injuries to their low back, hips, or knees, the Cook Bridge can help rebuild leg strength in the early stages of recovery, before they’ve gotten medical clearance to do squats, leg presses, etc.