Step Up Progressions To Build Strong Knees - The Patrick, Poliquin, Peterson Progression

What's up, you guys? Today I'm going to talk a little bit about one of my favorite exercise progressions that's been pretty much like a cornerstone in the ATG slash Knees Over Toes program that I've been doing for the past like 8+ months now. And that is the progression from the Patrick step to the Poliquin step to the Peterson step. And to do this exercise progression, I have been using the Slant Stack from the Tib Bar Guy, and this has been such a game changer. I have absolutely loved this. It's so cool how you can utilize this, and I'm going to show you how you can use it for each of these 3 exercises. And really quick, before I dive into the difference between those 3 different step-ups, I wanna talk about why it's important to do these exercises in the first place. Really where it comes down to is it's putting that knee into that forward motion where we're putting a lot of force in the front of the knee, right? And a lot of the times we've been taught to not have our knees over our toes like that. But in reality, if you think about how we go downstairs or how we take a step off of something, or even as athletes, how we have to move forward and decelerate and land from jumps, we are constantly in that knee over toe motion where our knee is over our toe and maybe we're landing, we're not 100% foot flat, we might have to balance. So this progression of these step-ups actually kind of hits all those targets from ankle mobility to knee strength to, um, knee stability and ankle stability. And it really does a great job of helping you progress through those movements. But overall, even for somebody who's not an athlete, this is just something that's important to do to build your knee strength up so that you're not somebody who has to get a knee replacement very early on in life. This is going to help to build up the strength around the knee, the ankles, and the lower leg so that you can support that knee joint over time and really make sure that you're taking the stress off the actual joint and preventing some of that bone-to-bone rubbing that can happen over time and create osteoarthritis. So the more you can actually support the knee from a muscular standpoint, the better, right? So that's what the goal of these step-ups is really about. And not to mention, the stronger the muscles are around the knee, the less stress there's going to be on the actual ligaments, which, as you know my story, I tore my ACL and I highly do not recommend that experience. So if you can prevent that by doing some of these exercises to really strengthen your knee and your quad and all the muscles surrounding it, do it to it. So the first exercise in this progression is the Patrick step, and the Patrick step is really great for not only building strength in your quad and your BMO but gaining mobility in your ankles. So if you do not have very mobile ankles, this is going to be a great starting point. You can start doing the Patrick step on the floor and having your working foot flat on the ground. Your other foot is going to be stepping out in front of you, tapping the heel in front, and ankle is going to be stacked over the hips. This is going to be a great starting point to just get used to this range of motion. Once you feel like you can conquer that at about, you know, 10 to 15 reps of just your body weight, you can increase that using the slant stack. These awesome stackable pieces to it coming in 2 inches per little stack, you can start with a 2-inch stack and increase that. And then once you feel like you can manage that with your ankle mobility, then going to the next stack up and going to 4 inches and then to 6 inches. So once you've made your way up to 6 inches on the stack and being able to master this movement with having good ankle mobility, um, and going about, you know, 10 to 15 reps per side and feeling pretty comfortable there, that's your good sign that you can move over to the next progression or the next movement in this progression together the pelican step. Now moving into the pelican step, with the pelican you're basically doing a Patrick step but with a slant. So your working foot is going to be on a slant forward and you're going to be stepping down again, hips stacked over the ankle, foot's reaching out in front of you. You're just tapping that heel down to the opposite foot and then making your way back up. And you're going to start again just with the slant, and then you can start to incorporate more height, which the slant stack makes it super easy to stack on more and more height at 2-inch increments. So super easy. And what the poliquin step actually does is it actually is developing more strength into the knee, again around the knee too, the quadriceps, the VMO, all that good stuff. But we're not necessarily needing to focus on ankle mobility here because you've already worked through that in the Patrick step. So this is where you start to focus more on that strengthening aspect into the knee. This is a really great motion if you've had ACL surgery like myself and are rehabbing your knee, or are going through patellar tendonitis, which can also be a byproduct of getting ACL surgery, like if you have jumper's knee or something like that, or just kind of any knee issues, this is really great for helping to strengthen the knee. So at this step in this kind of triad or this progression of those 3 exercises, this is the step where you're really forcing your knee and your quad to strengthen a lot. So again, you're going to want to build upon this starting with just the slant, then slant plus 2 inches, 4 inches, 6 inches. And then once you can comfortably do that for about 10 to 15 reps per leg at just your body weight, then you can move on to the next one, which is the Peterson step. So with the Peterson step, you're actually taking the slant board out of the equation now, but you're still going to be creating some of that extra forward motion by way of your own ankle movement. So you're actually going to be lifting your own heel of the working foot, dropping the other heel down, and then as you come back up, dropping your working heel back down onto the platform. So this is actually really great for combining work with ankle mobility, stability, and strength through that lower leg complex, as well as that forward angle motion into the knee. So you're strengthening the knee and the VMO, the quad, all at the same time. So it's very challenging to balance all of those, but once you get to this point It's going to be really important to gradually work your way up in height, number one, and then number two, start to add weight to this equation. This is going to be really important for athletes to start to build this motion and get comfortable with stabilizing their lower leg, their calf, their ankle, all that, and building that strength into the knee. It's such an important movement. If you think about it, we're landing like that as athletes all the time. When you're jumping, walking, running, taking steps, all that stuff, we're in that kind of knee over toe movement with that stress and stabilizing the lower leg with the ankle and the heel elevated like that, right? So really important movement to try to master if you're an athlete. Even if you're not an athlete and you're just rehabbing your knee, this is also just excellent to have that type of stability and strength at the same time. And the slant stack from the Tib Bar Guy makes it so easy to move through this progression really, really well with a nice piece of equipment that you can adjust throughout the entire process of moving from Patrick to Poliquin to Peterson. Now the rep ranges I've given in this video aren't necessarily like the ATG standards, so if you are somebody who's watching this video and is in the middle of doing the ATG program like I'm doing, or the Knees Over Toes program like I'm doing, that's a different kind of rep range standard from progressing from one to the other. So I can mention that down below in the description as well if you're curious what those rep ranges are. I'll put those in the description. Okay, so aside from those 3 exercises, I do want to mention just on the slant stack front of things, this thing is amazing for just doing even, um, ATG squats or like heel elevated squats, right? So instead of using like plate weights behind your heels where it could kind of be uncomfortable and it's not quite even and sometimes your heels can slip off of them, this really has a great traction surface on the slant stack. So it's just really grippy and I love it for that. You can also use it for something like the ATG ATG split squats to create a little heel lift as well if you don't quite have the full ankle mobility to drop the heel down. So guys, those are the 3 exercises in that Triple P progression. And again, I highly recommend getting something like the slant stack from the Tib Bar Guy for something like this because again, it's just really adjustable, it's easy to utilize like that, and you can use it for a bunch of other exercises as well. You can use it for the ATG style split squats to elevate your heel, you can use it for ATG full squats, you can use it for deficit deadlifts, you can use it for Jefferson curls. There's so things you can use it for from a strengthening standpoint, and even from a stretching standpoint. You can use it as a calf stretch board, an Achilles stretch board. There's so many cool things you can use with it, and I love just how multifunctional it is. So I highly recommend that. Definitely check the Tib Bar Guy down below. I put the link for the slant stack down in the description as well as above in this video, and you can use my code Victoria S. Dorsano for 10% off your order. So definitely go and check them out. Again, that's discount code Victoria S. Dorsano for 10% off your order with the Tib Bar Guy. And thank you again for the Tib Bar our guy for the slant stack. It's been so great to use it. I cannot say enough good things about it. And if you guys like this video and found it useful, go ahead and give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel. I would so, so, so appreciate it. And as always, I will see you guys next time. Bye!