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