Safety Tips for Aerobic Exercise Steps

Series Summary

The term aerobics, meaning "with air", came from Dr. Kenneth Cooper, of the San Antonio Air Force Hospital. He designated it as the name for the system of exercises he employed to prevent coronary artery disease. It is appropriate nomenclature given that the exercises are designed to condition the lungs to more effectively use oxygen and to strengthen the cardiovascular system. For those who choose to use it, aerobics is an important part of fighting heart disease and obesity. In this free online video series learn aerobics from personal trainer Ricketta Butler, who holds a Health Science Education Degree from the University of Florida. In this series of video clips she teaches aerobics exercises such as : the a step, hop turn, knee straddle, alternating knees, L step, basic left, over the top, basic right, safety for step exercises, straddle, turn steps, v step left, v step right, and the v step right and left.

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is Riki Butler and I’m a certified group exercise instructor. I’m certified through alpha and AAAI. I have been teaching advanced classes for the past eleven and a half years. Today I’ll be demonstrating aerobic exercises done on a step. Before we get started, I’m going to go over some safety with you. First, begin standing behind your platform, always standing up tall. When you come on to your platform you must step up heel toe first. Make sure that when you step on your platform, your knee is directly over your ankle. You’re going to go ahead and come up heel toe, extending your legs completely. You never want to step with slightly bent legs and engaged hip flexors. You always want to stand up tall. When you come down to the floor, step down, toe heel. You don’t want to step too far back. You want to make sure that you’re a foot’s distance away from the platform. You can go ahead and measure that by placing one of your feet right at the platform, your another foot behind the front foot, and then you want to bring that back foot the front foot back to meet your back foot. This is as far away from the step as you’re going to come down when you’re stepping. You never want to some past this point. You’re going to step all the way up, heel toe, extending in the hips and the knees, step down and toe heel. Make sure your complete foot makes contact with the platform, your complete foot is on the platform, and your entire foot is making contact with the ground, unless you are tapping. I’ll go over the individual of the safety as we’re doing the exercises. So let us go ahead and get started."