Commonly Used For: To avoid knee pain, hip pain, ankle pain and foot pain.
Video Transcription: This is a clams exercise which is a good way to strengthen your gluteus medius, which is on the outside edge of your hip and it's important to keep that one strong both for preventing knee pain, hip pain, ankle pain, foot pain — a lot of reasons to keep that muscles strong. So what you're going to do is to lay down on your side. The side facing up towards the ceiling is the side that you're going to strengthen. You want to have your feet together, your knees together, your hips going to be step straight up towards the ceiling. You don't want to get yourself rock back, or rock too far forward and then just like a clamshell, you're going to open your knees and close them keeping your feet together. You should feel it right here in your glutes. If you're not feeling that muscle working, you might be letting yourself rock back too far, so you can put yourself up against the wall or any other solid surface that can help keep your hips forward, as you raise up and down. It that's too easy, you can use an exercise band. You can get it from a sporting goods store online [here's one at Amazon.com]. You're going to tie your knees together, and then you perform the same exercise just against the resistance of the band now. And there are different levels of band to make this easier or harder. If it's still too easy, what you can do is raise your feet up off the floor, still keeping them together and then again open and close your knees just like a clamshell. Keeping those hips stacked straight up towards the ceiling. And that's the clams exercise.