Clams

Pilates Clams – Great for toned butts

Clams are a great Pilates exercise that help to tone your butt whilst building muscle for hip stabilisation.

These are been my staple exercise over the last 5 months whilst recovering from hip surgery.  It is super important to make sure that you are actually activating the right muscles and I tend to do this exercise with a finger digging into the side of my butt cheek to make sure I can feel the muscles tightening and working.

How to do a clam?

Start by lying on your side with your knees bent and your heels in line with your tailbone.  If your heels are too far forwards or backwards you may not feel this exercise working as effectively.

Clams

Lift your knee up whilst squeezing your heels together.  Make sure that you don’t roll your body backwards whilst doing this.  If you start to roll your hip back then you won’t feel the full benefit of this exercise.  Imagine that there is a wall behind you and you don’t want your top hip to roll back into the wall.

If you want to advance this exercise then lift the feet off the floor whilst squeezing the heels together or place a band around your knees that you have to resist against as you lift the knee up.

If you are visual and need to see a video clip of this exercise then please click here.  It isn’t me teaching it however it’s still a good demo.

If you do have any hip problems or weak glutes then feel free to get in touch to go through an assessment or training programme.

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