Put your leg strength to the test with this simple yet powerful exercise.
Do you perform step-ups in your workout routine? It’s an extremely functional unilateral exercise that boosts balance, protects your squats, and builds lower-body strength. It focuses on your glutes, quadriceps, calves, and hamstrings. Step-ups are named because you step up onto a bench or platform, then back down to the floor.
Unilateral means you use one leg at a time by forcing each to lift your entire body weight. This helps correct potential strength imbalances while recruiting the muscles that make up your core. Step-ups are chock-full of goodness. The number might surprise you.
Why Step-Ups Are a Solid Test of Lower-Body Strength
Step-ups are a productive test of lower-body strength and function because they require one leg to complete all the work.
To help you determine where you stand, we chatted with Gerard Washack, with Strong Republic Personal Training, who has more than 20 years of experience owning and operating personal training studios across the Coachella Valley. Washack designed Strong Republic around one belief system: adults over 40 deserve a workout program designed specifically for them and their needs.
“They take your balance into consideration and core strength to remain upright during the movement,” explains Washack. “Step-ups really expose how strong your legs are and how well your balance is.”
How To Do Them
- Begin by standing tall, facing a sturdy workout bench or plyometric box that’s knee height. Hold an optional dumbbell in each hand.
- Place your left foot firmly onto the surface, keeping your core engaged and chest tall.
- Press through your left heel to lift your body until your left leg is straight and you’re standing on the surface.
- Use control to lower back to the start position.
- Repeat on the other side.
What’s Actually Being Assessed?
Four things occur at the same time during a step-up: strength, balance, endurance, and coordination.
“Strength, because the lead leg is moving your full body weight upward against gravity; balance; endurance, because the muscles fatigue fast since the legs are the biggest muscles in the body and require the most oxygen; and lastly, coordination, because driving up smoothly without rocking or pushing off the bottom foot takes real motor control,” Washack tells us.
Which Muscles Are Performing the Work?
Your quads kick off the exercise, while your glutes drive your hips into extension once you reach the top. Your calves and glutes stabilize the ankle and knee, and your core has the job of keeping your torso from leaning forward. Lastly, the small hip stabilizers are engaged throughout to keep the standing leg from caving inward.
Washack says the step-up is “really the complete move.”
How Step-Ups Prep You for Real-Life Movement
A crucial part of your fitness routine as you age should be choosing exercises that prepare you for real-life movement. Step-ups do exactly that.
“Every staircase you climb is a step-up, [in addition to] every time you get out of a low chair without using your hands, getting up off the floor, hiking a trail, stepping onto a curb with groceries, even climbing into a truck,” Washack explains.
What’s a Strong Step-Up Benchmark After 60?
According to Washack, if you’re over 60 and in decent shape, you should be able to complete five to eight step-ups on each side—stepping onto a knee-height workout bench—without stopping. “Elite” status means performing roughly 20 step-ups per side with proper form and control. Now you have a number to chase.
Alexa Mellardo
