If you want an effective way to strengthen your legs, flatten your belly and benefit from rapid, intense cardio benefits, we highly recommend knee tucks. Although knee tucks can fire up your entire leg and glutes, they effectively work the core.
Plyometrics (aka as jump training or plyos) is a type of exercise training that uses speed and maximum force of different movements in short time intervals to build muscle power. It includes different types of exercises, like pushups, throwing, running, jumping, and kicking. Athletes often use plyometrics as part of their training, but anyone can do these workouts.
A Close Look at Knee Tucks
Knee tucks require full-body power to lift your body weight off the ground.
When you are multi-tasking the muscle groups during a workout, you burn more calories than perform exercises that use single muscle groups.
We suggest including knee tucks in your workout routine because aside from the cardio, you will get the chance to tone your lower body simultaneously.
Before Getting Started, We’ll Share Some Quick Tips So You Can Perfect Your Knee Tucks in No Time.
• Use your hands to boost momentum.
• Always make sure that you have a smooth surface to jump on.
• Do not forget to properly warm up before attempting a knee tuck.
Remember that you should not get discouraged if you cannot jump high right away, especially on your first attempt. Continue to practice and in no time, your jump will get higher.
How To Perform Knee Tucks
As a type of plyometric exercise, knee tucks can provide you with powerful results.
The exercise can challenge your muscles that other exercises cannot achieve – burn calories rapidly and increase your endurance and strength in the long run.
Take note that learning how to perform knee tucks safely is vital to prevent strain or injury.
Let’s Take a Closer Look at The Proper Steps on How To Perform Knee Tucks:
• Start by positioning your feet shoulder-width apart with your arms by your side.
• Lower your body into a squat position while keeping your back as flat as possible for correct alignment.
Lower your body until it feels as if your heels are ready to lift off from the floor.
• Maintain this lowered position only briefly and proceed to jump up, utilizing your arms for momentum and balance.
• Bring both knees as high as you can into the tuck position. You can even slap your hands on your knees or leave them by your sides.
Just make sure that your knees will not cave inward while in the air or when landing.
• Land back on the ground as softly as possible to avoid placing excess pressure on your knees.
At this point, your hips should come back and down to absorb some of the impacts as well.
• Maintain this lowered position briefly and repeat the entire movement as quickly as you can, making sure that you will maintain the right form.
Always remember that the main objective is to explode up, not down. I recommend aiming to land as softly as possible to prevent any injury.
Until you are steady on your feet and when landing, avoid squatting as deep before jumping up.
What Are the Benefits of Knee Tucks?
Once you decide to include knee tucks in your workout routine, it will provide you with several benefits such as the following that we’ll share below:
• Boost strength and endurance considerably in a brief period.
• Tone your entire body.
• Work on controlled movements.
In no time, you will notice an improvement in your overall peak power. Take note that this is a vital component of any high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workout.
This simply means that your body can readily burn calories long after the exercise is completed.
What Are the Muscles at Work?
• When performing knee tucks, it works out several muscles, such as the following:
• Glutes.
• Core.
• Hamstrings.
• Hip flexors.
• Biceps and anterior shoulders (this are due to the arm swing motion that helps power your body off the ground)
Now Let’s Proceed with The Next Steps.
• Begin by lying in a prone position with your stomach over the stability ball.
• Steadily walk your body out over the ball so that your hands are shoulder-width apart and on the ground in front of you.
• Keep your torso rigid to maintain proper alignment while keeping your legs squeezed together for stability. Avoid sagging or arching your lower back.
• Exhale and steadily move your knees towards your chest, rolling the ball forward as you move into a tuck position.
At this point, your knees should be below your hips while your shinbone is lying on top of the ball. Always engage your core.
• Breathe in, pushing your knees away, and return to the starting position.
Proper Warm-Up
Before performing knee tucks, you should warm up properly. It is not advisable to start any exercise routine if your muscles are cold.
Take note that plyometric exercises should not be done without the correct warm-up first.
Doing so can result in injury because plyometric exercises are intensive exercises where the muscles are stretched quickly.
Additionally, we suggest making sure that you are empowered since knee tucks necessitate a lot of effort or exertion to perform correctly.
Useful Tips on How to Perform Knee Tucks
Now we’ll share some useful tips on how to perform knee tucks.
Trying Out Different Modifications:
Performing knee tucks in a safe manner require you to have the right fitness level and strength. In case you are new to fitness, I suggest modifying the exercise first. A tip that we’ll share is removing the jumping part of the exercise.
You Can Check Out the Following Modifications:
• Individual knee lifts. From a standing position, raise and lower one knee at a time. Increase your speed and maintain adequate control over your movement.
• Squat tucks. With this variation, squat, stand, and elevate one knee to the chest level at a time, interchanging the knees.
• Seated knee tucks. While you sit on the floor or in a chair, lift your legs off the ground and position in front of you.
Bring your knees in toward your chest. Keep your hands on the ground or grasp the sides of the seat for support and avoid straining your back.
Engaging Your Body
Since you must execute every repetition of this activity quickly, you might neglect to involve your muscles as much as possible.
Always remember to continue to engage your core during the entire exercise and activate the muscles once you are ready to jump.
Knee tucks are great plyometric exercises. We recommended including it in your workout routine. Depending on your fitness objectives, the exercise provides several benefits, including working out several muscle groups at a time as well as improving your overall endurance and strength.
If you are comfortable with the plyometric exercise, which utilizes ‘jump training’ in which your body leaves the ground via a ‘spring-like’ motion, knee tucks are the ideal exercise for you.
Variations
If you want a different take on knee tucks, we suggest adding a stability ball. This will serve as an extra challenge for your muscles since they must work harder to stabilize and support your body.
Final Thoughts
Obviously, it will take practice to master the moves, but once you are familiar with the basics of how to do knee tucks, you can readily cut down calories and burn belly fat in no time.
NB Whenever you get the opportunity to learn from a qualified trainer – do it. Just to check that you are performing all the exercises in the correct way and that you’re progressing in the right direction.
That kind of thing is very reassuring and helps you in many ways!
Ann Roberts
