Step Up Exercise: How To, Benefits, Variations

Split squats, lunges, squats, leg presses, and deadlift variations get most of the love in your leg routine because they’re responsible for most of your leg benefits. But the step-up exercise is an often overlooked exercise in many lifters’ routines. It looks so easy because all you have to do is place your feet on the bench and take steps.

It’s not like a barbell squat or deadlift where you have to go through a mental checklist to rip the weight off the floor or lift it up through the hole. You place your foot on a raised surface and step forward.

The step-up is quickly regressed or advanced for all fitness levels, and it fits into almost any exercise program to build unilateral muscle and strength in your quads and glutes. Here we’ll dive into the step-up, how to do it, how the muscles are trained, benefits, things to focus on, and variations to spice up your step-up game.

Ready to step up to the plate? Then let’s go.

What is Step Up?

The step-up lunge combines an upward step, like climbing stairs. Do you take the stairs instead of the elevator? You push off with your lead foot to lift yourself up to a standing position on a bench. Then you slowly step back to the starting position with the non-lead leg. Make sure your lead foot is glued to the step.

How to do the step-up exercise

1. Depending on your hip mobility and strength, place your feet on a box so that your knee is bent at a 90-degree angle or the hip crease is slightly below your knee. Make sure it is level.
2. Either perform with body weight, hold dumbbells by your side, and stand about a foot from the box.
3. Place your entire lead foot on the box with your toes pointing forward.
4. Push off with your lead foot to stand up. As you stand, think about driving the glutes forward into hip extension.
5. Once your knee is extended, either place the other foot on the box, balance on one leg, or bring your non-working leg into a high knee.
6. Lower slowly with the non-lead leg and reset and repeat.

Step Up Exercise Form Tips

It looks like there’s nothing in it because you put your foot on a box and take a step. Yes, it’s true, but there are a few things to keep in mind to get the most out of the move.

• Choosing your box height: A general rule of thumb on box height is that your knee makes a 90 degree angle when your foot is on the box. If you are new to this exercise or have knee pain, stepping on a small box is recommended. When you’re feeling adventurous, raise the height of your box so that your knees are slightly higher than your hips. Greater range of motion means greater muscle building potential. But it will be better if you look at some things. First, if your torso leans too far forward, you hurt your back and rear. You don’t want to stress your lower back, just your quads and glutes. Second, your knee may cave in, or your hips may become uneven when trying to take a high step. It’s best to stick to movements that you can control and don’t cause potential problems.

• Control eccentricity: A tendency, especially when tired, is to drop your back foot to the floor and neglect to control eccentric contractions. Not only is it not great for your joints, but you miss out on strength and muscle gains. Always try to control the bottom part of the step-up.
• Let the front leg work: The point of the step-up is to let the front leg work to fuel your quad and glute gains. But when the weight becomes heavy, and the lifter gets tired, there may be a tendency to push off the back leg. Doing this makes it easier for the lead leg, but you’ll use momentum and lose muscle tension on the lead leg.

Muscles trained.

Step-ups primarily work the legs and core with little involvement from the upper body, except if you use a load. Here are the core muscles trained by step-ups.

• Quadriceps: All four quad muscles work together to extend the knee.
• glutes: Because the hip is in flexion, the glutes help you stand up.
• Hip adductors: Assist in hip flexion and provide stability to the knee to prevent inward collapse.
• Hamstring: The glutes help with hip extension, and the eccentric strength of the hamstrings helps you lower with control.
• calves:A slight plantar flexion is involved during the step-up, but the calf muscles work overtime to keep you balanced on one leg.

5 Benefits of Step Up Exercises

Once you’ve mastered the bodyweight step-up, adding weight to this exercise is the bomb. Lifting weights will increase unilateral strength and help develop the muscles between the sides, making climbing stairs easier. Here are some other important benefits of Step Up.

• Better single leg balance: Step-ups will improve you. Balance and proprioception (a sense of awareness in space) because when you go up and down on one leg you are controlling yourself. Plus, you’ll be more focused because you don’t want to lose balance and embarrass yourself in front of the gym crowd.
• Better muscle development and unilateral strength: Bilateral exercises are great and where you get most of the benefits, but sometimes they mask muscle and strength imbalances between the legs. Single-leg exercises like step-ups help strengthen these imbalances and lead to better muscle development in each quad and glute.
• Accessible and easily developed: All you need for step-ups is a box, bench and some weights, making them easily accessible to both beginners and advanced lifters. It is not a technical exercise like barbell squats and deadlifts and requires minimal instruction. Also, by increasing the height of the box and using heavy dumbbells it is easily moved.
• Easy on the lower back: As with most single-leg exercises, there is less compressive load on the spine, so your spine is under less stress. Also, you don’t need as much load to get a training effect because of the unilateral nature, as with back squats and Romanian deadlifts.
• Improving your barbell squat can: A common weakness with the barbell squat is growing slowly or getting stuck in the hole, and one way to prevent this is to improve leg drive. Split squats and paw squats are great options, but don’t fall asleep on step-ups. Along with your ability to focus and load the quads and glutes, step-ups are another option for improving your leg drive.

Step-up programming tips

The step up is an exercise to strengthen the imbalance between the sides and improve muscle development but don’t think of it as an absolute strength exercise as it is an assistance exercise. No one brags about their one-rep step-up max.

Here, use good looks as your guide for the load and not ego. Use these recommendations as a guide, which can be tailored to your fitness goals.

For hypertrophy: Doing three to four sets of 8 to 15 reps on each side and combining it with another glute or quad exercise works well to build muscle. For example

1A Weighted step-up: 8 to 15 reps per side

1B Bodyweight Hip Thrust: 15 to 20 reps

To endure: Do two to three sets of 15 to 20 reps on each side using body weight or a light load to feel the burn. You’ll be getting your heart pumping afterwards, so combining it with floor exercise works well. For example:

1A Step-ups 15 to 20 reps per side

1B Lowering the passive leg: 10 repetitions per side

3 Step Up Exercise Variations

Step ups and downs are great for the glutes and quads but can get boring in a hurry—add to your regular step up workout with these three variations.

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