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