Fit Over 50 - Quad Exercises

Margie Weiss: Hi! I am Margie Weiss. This video is how to get fit over 50. The section that we are doing right now is lower body, the Quad which is the main muscle group. This is Christina, she is not over 50 but I am as much over as she is under, so we are good to go, we are about even. What we are going to do is Quad and the idea behind the quad workout for someone who is a little bit older, you may have knee issues, and so going up and down in a main squat which would be standing straight up and coming all the way down and going backup and down might be hard on your knees. So we can help to strengthen the knees and still get a good quad workout by using a Resist-A-Ball which is this big ball here to sit on, or a chair and what Christina is going to do this time is lift up just a little and come back down just a little bit, because we are stressing the knees, tendons in the knees and ligaments in the knees so that we are also getting the quads for doing it in a position where her feet are pointed straight forward. She is working the main quad which is the two muscles right smacking the middle of her legs. If we want to work different parts of the quads and the quad has four parts, that's why it's called quad, the inner quad and outer quad and to do that all you have to do is change foot position. If she puts her feet together and does the exact same small lift and small drop, being careful not to go too higher up above the ball because you dont want it to roll out from under you. Belly is into our backbone, glutes are tight, thats her hips and she is squeezing these together, she is going to get a little bit more around the outside of her leg. If we wanted to go to the inner thigh we are going to turn her toes out and we are going to walk her feet, kind of far apart, kind of like second position in Ballet because then when she rises and lowers she is going to get the inner part of the thigh and again safety is really important on this, dont come up too high, dont go down too low. If it bothers your knees you are not going to want to do this exercise. Notice that she is keeping her knees behind her toes, thats really safe. So as she does the exercise any exercise, go ahead and relax here, she is going to be thinking of what her core is doing, because all the strength comes from her core. Her belly button is going to be to her backbone, so you draw inwards and she is going to squeeze the glute muscles together, that way she a really strong core position before she does any of the exercises. That was the front of the legs; on the upper legs, next we are going to go the backside of the legs which is the hamstrings.