Anna Atras Training

24/08/2026

Fantastic drill to train inner thigh muscles 🔥 Goal: prevent adductor muscles strain and give your hips and legs more freedom.
⏩ Safe setup supporting the lower back
⏩ You start by working with gravity and no external load.
⏩ The only thing you need to begin is to get comfortable, using blocks to support the thighs so you don't feel the pinching in the outside of the hips or extreme pulling on the p***c bone. Built passive range AKA flexibility.
⏩ Begin by long holds and gentle breaths. 2mins +. Relax 😉
⏩ Then, work on controlling the range by moving legs out and in.
⏩ Start adding external resistance by attaching ankle weights. Build strength and mobility progressively.

23/08/2026

🦵🏻 Hip flexion is the most used movement pattern in your body. Every step, every squat.

⏩ The iliopsoas doesn't just lift the leg. It stabilizes your lumbar spine.

⏩ A hip flexor that feels tight is very often one that's never been trained to tolerate load through its full range.

🔵 These six exercises can help you start building the control and load tolerance that your hip needs.

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💻 If you are looking for online group classes to improve joint function, range of motions, control, reduce aches and discomfort, improve biomechanics, boost your strength, stability and mobility then consider joining my live streams or on demand sessions.
Sign up here ⏩ 🔗
https://annaatrastraining.com/live-classes

If you need more guidance and one-on-one work to tackle specific aches, instability and similar musculoskeletal problems then send me a private message ⏩ ✉️ https://annaatrastraining.com/contact

23/08/2026

When LESS is MORE 👣.

Finding stillness with a reduced base of support can be quite challenging.
But it goes beyond integration of the body parts, ribs - core - pelvis, and good sensing of the ground through the toes.
It also requires focusing the gaze, slowing the mind, stabilising the breath.

Nice add on to the morning routine 😉
Helpful to build stronger feet and ankles 🦶🏻

22/08/2026

🤔 Training hamstrings at home can be challenging because you need to play around with setups to actually target hamstrings effectively.

🦵🏻 Hamstrings, a group of muscles spanning the back of your thigh between sit bone and lower leg (yes, below the knee!), that influences your knee movement: bending and rotation, as well as the position of the pelvis and movement of the hip. They do a looot for our posture, pelvic position (and lumbar curve) and daily movement and locomotion.

Yup, these are essential for knee health, hip health and pain-free aging as well as stability when walking well into our senior years, to be training these muscles in both lengthened and shortened positions and learn to control this muscle at different ranges and speeds ideally.

But... In my experience as a coach, they are just not being trained very often. They tend to cramp or get injured, or are just chronically tight.

⏩ This is just one example of a simple at-home setup to target the back of the thigh and support the knee as well as the hip.

22/08/2026

Future-proofing 🧱⏩ If you're up for a 🔥 in your thighs 😉

Ladies, seriously, if you haven't yet, start building strength in your quads and glutes.
A lot of issues in the knees, and hips comes from weakness and imbalances in stabilising the pelvis and the knee cap.
I see that in the females in my family 50+ and in all the ladies that over the years have been doing Pilates with me or visiting the osteopathic clinic.

Adjust depth, reps and foot setup to suit your needs and abilities 👍🏻

Start with 5 shallow reps if you have you.
Build over time.

If you need more guidance like group sessions or personal coaching, message me: annaatrastraining.com

21/08/2026

As per joint and muscle function, if you mix hip extension, hip abduction and rotation (especially against the external resistance) you will pretty much make all your glute muscles work (max, medius, minimus) 👍🏻

⏩ Here I am showing you just a few fun ways to start building hip strength safely at home using a resistance band and blocks.

⏩ ‼️ Make sure you moving specifically in the hip and not swaying your upper body or rotating or aching your lower back.

🍑 Use them as prehab, rehab, warm up or workout.

21/08/2026

I've got some awesome hip-knee strengthening drills here for you folks 🦵🏻 🔥
⏩ If you suffer from recurrent tightness, pulling, ache in the hip region, these 5 setups with a roller and a wall can do wonders 🙏🏻.
I go through these anc variations many times per week as a warm up, prehab protocol and workout when done with dumbbells.

⏩ I wish walking and moving around was enough, but the truth is we do SIT so, so, so much, whenever you want it or not. Modern life kinda forces us to in many ways. Think office, car, underground, train, plane, dinner to name a few... And we don't sit down on the floor like our ancestors did, right? 😳

⏩ Even though these may seem generic, considering our modern, very sedentary (or else, hip-flexion driven) lifestyle, these drills will challenge the key players in hip and thigh region: glute max, med and min, deep rotator cuff of the hip and 2 big players in the lower limb affecting the knee: quads and hamstrings 🍗 🦵🏻

⏩ I am writing an article and working on the new tutorial about THE MUSCLE TIGHTNESS - what, why & how. So few nuggets 🪙 for you if you want to deepen your understanding:

🪙 The most common reason for chronic tightness/ pulling sensation in the muscle is that this muscle is being asked to do a job it wasn't built for.

🪙 When the joint (be it your hip, knee, pelvis or lower back segment) lacks stability because of: a) hypermobility = lax ligaments, or b) a stabilizing muscle that's weak, or inhibited - another player on the team ends up covering two positions at once. It's a substitution, not a malfunction.

🪙 The same substitution pattern shows up in the hamstrings, which frequently take over for underactive glutes.

🪙 In every case, the tight-feeling muscle isn't the problem - it's the symptom of weakness or poor motor control somewhere else in the chain.

🪙 A muscle that feels tight isn't necessarily mechanically shortened at all. It may instead be fatigued, overloaded, or compensating for a weak link elsewhere in the kinetic chain (Hampson, 2020)

🪙 & the GOLDEN NUGGET for you:

"A muscle held in a sustained, low-level contraction doesn't fully relax between demands - picture clenching your fist just slightly, all day, without ever fully letting go. That constant low-grade squeeze restricts local blood flow, the same way stepping lightly but continuously on a garden hose slows the water running through it. Less blood in means less oxygen delivered and less waste cleared out, so metabolic by-products 🫟 build up and the tissue's chemistry turns acidic (roughly pH 6–5). It's this acidity - not any actual shortening - that directly switches on the muscle's local pain sensors." 🧪

You walk. You do your sport. And you still end up buried under a hi...