A step-up is a fantastic exercise for your quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes, which are the front of the thigh, the back of the thigh and the glute muscles. It’s an excellent exercise because it causes your one side to work with your entire body weight and engages your stabilizers and core. Another benefit of working the lower body, especially one side of the time with all of your body weight, is you will be engaging more muscle fibres.
Your legs include a significant number of fast and slow twitch muscle fibres, so by doing a step-up you’ll be engaging a pretty high percentage of your fast twitch, otherwise known as white fibres.
The significance of engaging these fibres is when you do so, it will stimulate your metabolism. So whether your goal is to raise your metabolism to wake up your brain, or burn several calories in a short period of time, you can always trust the step-up to help you get there.
Bonus benefits from doing step-ups include enhanced stability, motor control, overall muscle and joint strength, and bone density – primarily in the hip and femur/thigh.