Step Up To Bigger Legs

There's no debating the fact that squats are the king of all leg exercises, but then there's also no debating the fact that variety is the key to continued gains.

And one place that you surely want variety is in your exercise selection. When it comes to legs, squats should be the cornerstone in your program, yet step-ups are another great exercise that you should consider adding, but probably never do them. Most women are smart and realize the value of step ups. Yet most guys view the step up as a woman's exercise. It's silly because when you break it down, the step up is technically a one-legged squat. And I'll say it again, squats are the king of all leg exercises: whether that is with two legs or one leg.

A recent study compared muscle activity of the major leg muscles.

This included the glutes, outer hams (biceps femoris), inner hams (semitendinosus), inner quads (vastus medialis/tear drop), outer quads (vastus lateralis), and front quads (rectus femoris/front sweep) during four different versions of step ups: 1) regular step-ups, lateral step ups, diagonal step ups, and crossover step ups. All step ups were done using a 6-rep max weight.

They found that the glutes and hams (both inner and outer) were best targeted with the standard step up.

However, all the quadriceps muscles were better targeted with the diagonal step up.

Jim's take-home point:

So definitely consider adding step-ups into your leg training day, not to mention for your HIIT and/or cardioacceleration. They are basically a good way to do a one- legged squat. Sure, you can't go as heavy and impress everyone in the gym, but that's because it's a tougher exercise and done with one leg, which requires balance. But as the research shows, it clearly targets the leg muscles. Plus, you can do different varieties to focus more on the hams or the quads.

To focus more on the hamstrings and glutes, do regular step ups with the bench or box in front of you and stepping straight up onto it. To focus more on the quads do diagonal step ups. This involves stepping up onto the box or bench with the working leg at about a 45-degree angle to the back leg.

Consider adding these to your leg workouts by placing them between your quad-focused work and hamstring focused work. For example, if you do squats, leg presses, leg extensions, and leg curls, after leg extensions do two sets of diagonal steps ups for quads followed by two sets of regular step ups for hams and glutes and then finish with leg curls.

Click on the link below for a workout that I designed that shows you how to incorporate step ups in your leg workouts:

https://www.jimstoppani.com/home/workouts/default-workouts/262

And here's an accompanying video I did on the topic of step-ups:

Reference:

Simenz, C. J., et al. Electromyographical analysis of lower extremity muscle activation during variations of the loaded step-up exercise J Strength Cond Res. 26(12):3398-3405, 2012.

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