Step Ups

Step ups are an effective exercise which tones and strengthens the muscles in your lower body, specifically hamstrings, glutes, and calves. This exercise can be done almost anywhere and is perfect for home workouts. By raising and lowering your body on one step, you use your body weight to engage and build your muscles. Step ups can be dynamic or static, and can be modified according to your fitness level. Step ups are perfect for increasing your agility, balance and stability.

Transcript

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This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, talking about our resistance training progressions
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for the lower body.
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The second progression in our relative flexibility progression is step ups.
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We started originally with squats, then as our mobility gets better we can progress to
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a step up.
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I'm going to have Salvina come out and help us demonstrate.
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Now, the form doesn't change for a step up from a squat.
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We still have the same kinetic chain checkpoints, the same alignment to worry about.
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So I'm going to have you go ahead and step up here.
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Good, we're going to be looking at ankle, knee and hip staying in a nice straight line.
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You want to be very careful to make sure that you don't see somebody's knee dive in.
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If somebody's knee does duck in they might not be ready for the step up exercise, or
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you may be able to progress them to a step up but start with a slightly smaller step.
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The lower the step is the less the need for dorsiflexion, the less the need for hip mobility
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to keep good form without compensation.
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The other form checkpoints we want to check, is our tibia torso angle, just like we did
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in our squat.
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So go ahead and step up, and I want you to step down half way.
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So we can see right here that Salvina's torso is parallel, or has the same angle as her
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tibia.
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In this case she's leaned back a little bit, but this is a hard position to hold.
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So go ahead and let me have you step back down, and back down.
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Now, the progressions for a step up, we can start with our normal step up, its a tough
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exercise unto itself.
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We can progress from a strength training perspective by adding resistance, so she'll hold dumbbells,
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and we'll use as heavy of dumbbells as we need to keep our rep range under 12 with good
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form.
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We can go for stability progressions by going to a step up with balance.
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So step up, balance, perfect.
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And then continue our progressions for stability by going through multiple planes.
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So we're going to go for a frontal plane step up, so she's going to step up sideways and
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balance, perfect.
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Good.
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And our transverse plane progression, she's going to start facing forward, and end facing
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sideways, adding that turn or that transverse plane movement.
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One more try. Go ahead and step up,
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squeeze your glutes, draw-in, hold,
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absolutely perfect.