Start by standing with your feet hip distance
apart. Engage your core muscles and slightly push
your chest out, while pulling your shoulder blades back, and together. Place arms on your hips, or in front of your
chest, to help keep you balanced. Bend your knees while putting the majority
of pressure towards the back of your foot, and lower your glutes down and back as if
you were about to sit in a chair. Keeping weight on your heels, continue to
lower your butt down so that your thighs are parallel to the ground.
With control, lift your weight back up, engaging
your hamstrings and calves, and jump upwards, using your lower body strength to spring up
while extending your arms up. Land with feet distance apart and slowly continue
the process of lowering, lifting, and jumping to repeat the exercise. Locking out your knees between the squat and
the jump actions puts additional strain on the joints in your knees and can also lead
to strain in your low back. Be sure to always keep a slightly soft knee,
especially before lifting off of the ground for the jump and the landing. While bending at your knees, make sure to
keep your feet firmly planted at least hip distance apart, with your feet parallel or,
depending on your flexibility, slightly turned out to help your hips.
If your fee are too close together, you're
less stable through your torso, and hips can lose balance, especially during the jump. If your feet are too far apart, there will
be excess strain on your hip flexors, and you can overcompensate by straining your back. Be careful that you don't put too much pressure
on your toes, or lean too far forward with your chest. If you have too much weight toward the top
of your feet, you risk knee strain and it will throw off your balance during the lower,
lift, and the jump. Try to keep your knees over your heels making sure that they don't fall past your big toe during the bend.
Your hips should stay behind your knees with
your torso upright, not pitching too far forward. Half squats are a great way to build lower
body strength until you're comfortable lowering your glutes past your knees on the drop. To limit the range of motion when performing
this exercise, just decrease the bend in your knees during the squat and extend back up
without the jump. Place a weighted barbell, or hand weights
on your shoulders and traps. Carefully lower down, extending knees to a
parallel position to the floor and then repeat, making sure that you aren't staining to hold
the weight above shoulders, allowing your neck to stay long and weight going toward
strengthening traps, shoulders, lats, and back muscles.
With a pair of hand weights, start with your
arms pulled into your chest. Upon lowering your glutes to form the squat,
extend your arms out in front of you. While lifting back up to start position, squeeze
your biceps, triceps, and lats even tighter to engage and use more muscles in your arms
while performing this exercise. .
Video Description:
Don't lock your knees, or let your weight fall too far forward when performing these full-body toning squat jumps!
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