BEST Quad Exercise - Eccentric Step

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Video Transcription:
Welcome back to Foundation Physical Therapy’s YouTube Channel. Today we’re going to go over an eccentric step which is a way to train loading response. So first we’ve got to talk about loading response. Loading response is when you’re running and your foot hits the ground if you hear that treadmill really hitting hard or you just hear this foot lands a lot harder than this foot the problem is when you hit that ground you’re really stomping down and you’re not accepting the weight by kind of recoiling onto this leg. Two reasons that is not beneficial are one that’s a lot of ground reaction forces, a lot of stress going up through that leg. Two you’re really robbing your performance. The best way to get the most propulsion out of this leg is to land kind of squat down a little bit or accept that weight through there and then push off because I take advantage of something called elastic recoil which is a property in the muscles that they actually are more efficient if you put them on a little bit of pre-stretch and then push off. So to train that what we’re going to do is an eccentric step. So this is a 6 inch step that’s a little more aggressive you can start with a 4 or a 2 inch step. What you’re going to do is basically start by standing with the feet right next to each other. Big thing here is to keep the hips level. You can do that by either holding here or by placing your hands on top of your head if you feel like you’re swaying a lot. So I stabilize my core, I keep this hip, I mean this knee straight and I pull the toes up . I want to touch with this heel not stomp down with this heel and give and I definitely don’t want this knee going across my body to the inside. So what I’m going to do is stabilize my core I’m going to come down, touch and then come back up. And again the whole time I’m trying to keep my hips level. It’s going to be a little more challenging then it looks when you’re just stepping off a step if you really pay attention to all of these things. What you’ll feel are the hips on this side working plus the quad. This is just a drill to teach you how to land a little bit softly and to have the strength to land a little more softly while you’re running. That decreases stress on the hips, on the knees even on the ankles which is all beneficial.