0:04 This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, and in this video we're going to go over the quadruped which 0:08 we typically use for transverse abdominis, or intrinsic stabilization subsystem activation. 0:13 This is definitely one of those fundamental core exercises I think everybody should know. 0:18 I'm going to have my friend Adam come out, he's going to help me demonstrate this exercise. 0:22 Now the first thing we're going to do is get Adam into a quadruped position, which ideally 0:26 would actually be a six point position, and that is hands underneath the shoulders, knees directly 0:32 underneath the hips, and then notice Adam's dorsiflexed here so that he can engage his feet, 0:37 push back a little bit which is going to help engage his glutes a little bit. Now the 0:42 whole point behind the quadruped position is to put yourself in a position where your abdominal 0:48 contents weigh down against your anterior abdominal wall. So now there's actually some resistance to 0:54 the drawing in maneuver, and that drawing in maneuver is just bringing your belly button 1:00 in, kind of not sucking in the center like as hard as you possibly can, but just gently 1:07 pulling your lower abdomen away from your waistband is probably a good cue. Now once we 1:12 get Adam doing that, the next thing we probably want to do is make sure he's still breathing, 1:17 because people have a tendency to draw in or suck in and then they stop breathing. That's going to 1:22 make this exercise very difficult if we're going to do this for 30, 60, 90 seconds, all of a sudden 1:28 Adam turns blue and the exercise is over. So he's drawn in, he's looking good, now 1:35 what we're going to do is challenge his ability to use those muscles to aid in stabilization of 1:42 his torso as we add certain stability or balance challenges to this. Now to ensure he's doing this 1:50 perfectly I'm going to use this softball on his back. This becomes a kinaesthetic cue 1:56 where I'm going to go okay Adam for all the stuff that we do you can't lose this ball, this ball has 2:00 to stay right here, and if you can I don't even want it to move. I really want you to try to 2:05 feel this, make sure you stay drawn in and hold that ball right there. Now this is tough for 2:12 some people, just doing this right here especially if we're talking about somebody with lumbar spine 2:17 pain can be a pretty serious challenge to hold on to for 30 seconds. Now if we can get somebody past 2:24 this, the first challenge I'll give them is just go okay you're going to be the tabletop, but we're 2:30 going to start removing legs, well in this case your arms. I'm going to have you just slowly march 2:36 just like this. And all I'm having him do is this real nice and slow 2:43 working on moving this ball as little as possible, maintaining the drawing and maneuver and breathing. 2:51 Of course he should feel his feet engaged, he's got his glutes engaged because he's pushing 2:57 back through the floor, and you see Adam's got this down pretty good, but I can tell you guys 3:04 Adam's not only a friend, he has been a patient of mine. He's had periods of of low back pain and 3:09 no matter how good he gets at quadrupeds and some of the other progressions that we'll show 3:15 in later videos, sometimes he has to come back to this because pain creates some reflexive 3:20 changes in our motor unit recruitment that'll make this hard for him again. How's that feeling? 3:27 Pretty tough. Yeah once you add this ball the whole game changes. Now we're going to increase the lever 3:34 length here on his arms as our next progression, what I'm going to have him do is go into scaption, 3:40 which is just thumb up arm elevation, just out a little bit, so not quite straight but out this 3:47 way a little bit. It tends to feel a little bit better on the shoulder to go thumb up 3:53 and you can see now he's essentially taking away the same amount of stability 3:58 as he was with marching but adding this gives a bigger lever for him to have to stabilize against. 4:07 Nice job Adam, nice job. 4:12 And you can see he's maintaining the ball and of course drawing in maneuver is 4:17 still right there Adam's a pro. So next what do we got. Well the next progression there is a 4:25 a little bit of controversy over the next progression, if you're asking me I think the 4:31 next progression is opposite arm opposite leg raise. There are some people who think just legs 4:38 is the next progression. Now here's the theory behind these two things so you guys can make a 4:43 professional decision on which way you think you should go. I think opposite arm opposite leg raise 4:48 is easier than just legs because if he lifts this leg, this arm essentially counterbalances this leg, 4:58 when he doesn't have this arm he doesn't have a counterbalance. Now the alternative 5:04 argument is if he does just his leg, he still has three points of support which he doesn't have 5:13 when he does opposite arm opposite leg. I usually don't find that having the three supports 5:20 helps all that much, but we could go in either direction and you might have to experiment 5:28 a little bit. I find more often than not I go from marching to scaption, to opposite arm leg raise. 5:37 So let's go through that for sure now Adam. So he's going to go this arm, right arm is going 5:43 to go out into scaption while he goes straight back with his left leg. Now notice when he goes 5:49 back with his leg I'm actually going to have him point his toe, plantarflex good, and notice his 5:53 toe is just a couple inches from the floor. If Adam tries to go up with his leg instead, 6:00 you can see he immediately goes into lumbar extension, which is what we don't want. Remember 6:04 the whole idea behind these exercises maintaining the drawing in maneuver and keeping all of this 6:09 incredibly steady, right this is a stabilization exercise, no motion. So I always say reach back 6:17 not up. Oh that's one point, one point gone. This is like golf though the higher your score 6:24 the worse you are. So here we go opposite arm opposite leg, Adam did pretty good 6:30 on that one and then he can come back and he can try to switch which is really tough, 6:38 good and then if you're asking me I actually think now let's try just legs. Alright we're going to 6:45 try just switching legs, make sure you come all the way back to dorsiflexion on your other leg, oop, 6:51 there you go. Sorry I gave him too many cues there. So 6:54 point your toe out, all the way out, there we go perfect, and then back, there we go drive into 7:02 this foot a little bit so that you get stable, and then go with the other leg, there you go, 7:06 dorsiflex get that toe in, good drive into this foot, now back with this leg, good. Do you find 7:13 this harder or the opposite arm opposite leg raise harder? (This one). Yeah so he finds legs 7:18 harder and I think with a healthy population for the most part you're going to find that just 7:23 legs is actually really really challenging. Now if you want to take away a point of contact we can 7:30 make yet another progression and go okay Adam what we're going to do 7:34 is we're going to go just this leg, just your left leg and I'm going to remove 7:42 this support .So we're going to have you put your right hand on your 7:48 left shoulder. There you go. I can't get my left and right straight, I can get all the muscles straight 7:52 but not my lefts and right. That's awesome, good and then we're going to go just this leg, and 7:57 that's actually really challenging. This is not an easy progression to do at all. How does that 8:03 feel? (Super tough). Super tough, takes a lot to draw in, he's even getting some good glute activation. 8:10 It takes some thought to learn to drive through this leg so we get some glute 8:14 stabilization here, and notice that ball is staying, that's tough. This is the key guys, Adam's making 8:21 this look way easier than it actually is. So there you have it, this is the quadruped. 8:28 You can put your arm down for a second. This is the quadruped for transverse abdominis activation 8:34 which in actuality if you go back to my article on the intrinsic stabilization subsystem 8:41 is, transverse abdominis activation is always activation of all these other muscles too that 8:46 stabilize the lumbar spine that are a little bit deeper. So this is intrinsic 8:50 stabilization subsystem activation more accurately. I think this is one of those foundational 8:57 core exercises. This is how we started, is on the floor in quadruped position with first 9:04 just arms marching, then arms with scaption, then opposite arm leg raise, then just legs, 9:12 then legs with one support removed, and then from here we could go into things like the 9:19 hardest quadruped progression ever which we have a video on that, dynamic quadrupeds 9:24 or Adam's going to be showing you his resisted quadruped crawl in a future video. 9:31 If you have any questions please leave them in the comments box below, thank you Adam.
