How to Do the Fire Hydrant Exercise: Steps, Benefits, Tips & More

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December 31, 2021

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What is A Fire Hydrant Exercise?

The fire hydrant is an exercise that is included in the lower body workout and is able to tone your glutes. In addition to that, it can also work on your outer thighs. If you see a fire hydrant exercise before and after the image, you will find a contrast difference in the shape of the glutes and thighs of the practitioner.

A fire hydrant exercise tones your thighs, it does not make them bigger. Hence, if you are finding an exercise that can help you shed extra weight on the butt and outer thighs, a fire hydrant exercise is perfect for you.

A fire hydrant leg workout can work on the sides of your glutes with the help of concentrated movement of your legs moving to your side. Another body part where a fire hydrant works is your core. If you want to tone your tummy and extend hip movement, the fire hydrant exercise can help you.

Fire Hydrant Workout Benefits

If you want to stick to your fire hydrant leg workout, merely knowing what is a fire hydrant exercise is not enough. You will also have to know various fire hydrant exercise benefits to nudge you to do this exercise every time you go to the gym.

Here is a list of the most important fire hydrant workout benefits :

Tones Your Muscles: The muscles that get engaged the most while you do fire hydrant exercise are the glutes and core. Your bodyweight works against your force and you gradually improve your strength level and tone your muscles.
Increases Your Mobility: Since they are a major muscle grip of your hip and pelvic region, glutes are very important for your mobility. From walking and running to sitting and standing, these muscles get engaged while you do regular actions. By making your glutes strong with the fire hydrant exercise, you will also improve your functionality and mobility.
Boosts Overall Fitness Of Your Body: Along with improved mobility, some other benefits of strong glutes are enhanced body balance and reduction in back pain. When you practice fire hydrant exercise, not only do you tone your glutes but you also boost the overall fitness of your body.
Improves Your Posture: Among all fire hydrant exercise benefits, probably the least known benefit is that this exercise can also improve your posture. Strong core and glutes will reduce pressure on your spine and that translates to an improved body posture. If you see a fire hydrant exercise before and after image, you will see that the exercise practitioner is standing straight with a perfect posture in the after image.

How To Do Fire Hydrants

The fire hydrant is an easy exercise to add to your home workouts. But still, you have to focus on your posture to make sure that you do not put a strain on any major muscle group. Here is a step-by-step guide that will help you practice the fire hydrant workout:

Roll out a yoga mat and sit on it with all four limbs.
Keep your shoulders right above the hands and hips right above the knees.
Engage your core, look down, and lift the right leg making an angle of 45 degrees to the ground.
While lifting the leg, make sure that your knees stay at an angle of 90 degrees.
Lower down your leg and return to the pose where you started the fire hydrant exercise.
Change the leg and repeat the exercise. For beginners, 3 sets and 10 reps of the fire hydrant exercise are enough to get satisfactory results.

Fire Hydrant Exercise Variations

Since the fire hydrant is quite easy to perform, you might get bored of the exercise if you repeat it every day. In such a case, you can learn some fire hydrant exercise variations and add them to your workout. These variation exercises give you almost similar benefits:

Fire Hydrant Exercise With Band: If the conventional fire hydrant is too easy for you, you can loop a resistance band around your legs and perform the fire hydrant exercise with band.
Standing Fire Hydrant Exercise: If there is an injury or pain in your knees, you can try this variation. To do the standing fire hydrant exercise, just place your hands on the back of a chair and do the rest of the exercise similar to the regular fire hydrant.
Fire Hydrant With Ankle Weights: Other than a resistance band, you can also use ankle weights to increase the impact of this exercise. The weights will challenge your glutes more resulting in strong and toned muscles.

Fire Hydrant Exercise Alternative

If you want to try a new exercise altogether that hits your glutes and core, try the following fire hydrant exercise alternative exercises:

Bent knee hip extensions
Clamshell exercise
Side leg raise

Precautions And Safety Tips

Here is a list of precautions and safety tips to keep in mind while performing the fire hydrant workout:

Always do some easy warm-up stretches or exercises before jumping to the fire hydrant exercise. It will prevent injuries and increase your range of motion for the exercise.
You have to keep your pelvic and core stable throughout the fire hydrant exercise. The only body part that should be moving is your hips. If you do not stabilize your hips and glutes, you will fail to activate their muscles.
To make sure that you rotate your hips the right way, you have to keep your foot towards the opposite wall while you lift your leg.

Conclusion

The fire hydrant is an easy exercise to add to your workout for beginners. If you still feel that you have to put in a lot of effort while doing the exercise, you can decrease the number of reps according to your comfort.

The exercise strengthens your core and glutes quite effectively. Along with that, it also helps in correcting your body posture, increasing mobility, and reducing back pain. That is a lot of benefits considering how easy it is to practice the fire hydrant exercise.

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