Yesterday while teaching class, we were working a lot on the idea of extension. A couple of my classes were learning one of the Olympic lifts, using the medicine balls to perform cleans. One of the essential parts of the clean, or any Olympic lift, is getting "triple extension" -- fully extending your body at the top of the lift. That means shrugging the shoulders, fully opening the hips, straightening the knees and coming up onto your toes as you jump the weight into the air. Without achieving that full extension, full power and potential can not be achieved either.

For many people the process of "opening" the hips can be challenging. What feels like fully extended hips isn't. What feels like an over exaggerated flinging of the hips usually is correct! Like so many things, when we're retraining our brains, what feels odd and too much turns out to be correct.

I was thinking of an image to help the students imagine what "extension" and "open" looks like and it occurred to me later in the day that frogs have awesome extension. Maybe this image will help some people, maybe it won't - but if you encounter challenges in movements, try to think of a different way of approaching it, or an image that helps you achieve what you're after.