maratoolKnee Across The Body
How to do the knee across the body
- Lie down on the floor with your right leg straight. Bend your left leg and lower it across your body, holding the knee down toward the floor with your right hand. (The knee doesn't need to touch the floor if you're tight.)
- Place your left arm comfortably beside you and turn your head to the left. Imagine you have a weight tied to your tailbone. let your tailbone fall back toward the floor as your chest reaches in the opposite direction to stretch your lower back. Switch sides.
Muscles worked
The muscle under tension is the gluteus maximus, which is the strongest hip extensor you have and drives the pelvis forward at the top of the movement.
A stretch loads it at the far end of the range it normally works in, so the position you hold is itself the resistance.
Nothing travels, but holding the position is not the target muscle’s job alone: the abductors stop the knee collapsing inward and hold the pelvis square; the lower back keeps the spine from rounding.
Every exercise for:GlutesAbductorsLower back
How this movement works
Nothing travels once you are in position. The muscle holds a length under tension instead of working through a range, so effort is measured in seconds rather than repetitions — and the honest progression is more time in a good position, not a deeper one forced early.
It is filed under stretching, so the target is range of motion rather than force — a position you can settle into and breathe in, held long enough for the tissue to give.
What you need
These train the glutes too, using equipment this one does not:
- Kneeling Jump Squatbarbell
- Leg Liftbody only
- One Legged Cable Kickbackcable
- Physioball Hip Bridgeexercise ball
- Piriformis-SMRfoam roll
Difficulty
Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.
Of the 24 glutes exercises in this database, 13 are listed at beginner level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.