Step History & Evolution

Complexity - Training the Brain

With complexity, step patterns are combined or sequenced to vary movement and provide mental challenge, interest and fun.

While providing new challenges can help with exercise adherence by preventing boredom, there are actually healthy benefits associated with "training the brain". This kind of "mental exercise" can result in an improved ability to process information and subsequently react to and establish new neuromuscular pathways. This learning process can enhance one's mental acuity, coordination, and overall feelings of well-being when they are able to successfully perform in response to provided cues.

However, a reduction in exercise intensity may occur during the learning process. While intensity can be maintained to a certain degree with variables such as music tempo and step height, a less practiced participant may need to decrease range of motion in order to process and react to new cues and patterns.

Complexity Variables Affecting Intensity

The technique used by the instructor to teach multi-skill combinations may also affect the participant's level of intensity. There are a multitude of choreographic techniques that can be used to teach complex combinations, but which works best is dependent on a variety of situational factors - the assessed skills of the participants, the approach (where one might lose visual perspective), the pattern sequencing and/or tricky transitions.

Preview Method

The preview method is a technique applied by putting the participants in a "holding pattern" - ie. traveling knee lifts - where they are instructed to watch as the sequence is demonstrated. This method can be used to show patterns where visual reference may be lost by facing the back of the room or tricky transitions in footwork sequencing. However, some instructors simply use this method to teach each combination in it's final sequence - a "watch, then do" approach.

Skilled or proficient participants who are familiar with the auditory cues and movement patterns, will be able to react and successfully perform the sequence with little hesitation.

Less skilled participants - or even those who are simply new to the instructor's unfamiliar cues, terminology or sequencing - typically have to reduce intensity in order to successfully react to establish the new pathways.

But for unskilled or novice participants, still in the process of establishing automatic neuromuscular pathways of the basic movements and patterns, the use of the "watch, then do" method can leave them mentally frustrated and potentially "dead in the water" as far as intensity is concerned. This can occur when new participants become so mentally overwhelmed that they simply stop to try to figure out where, when, or IF they can jump back into the workout.

Build It and Break It Down

A more commonly used approach is the pyramid building technique which is considered more suitable for teaching a wide variety of fitness levels. This technique begins with large repetitions of each movement performed in the sequence. The sequenced movements are performed repeatedly with a gradual reduction to the final combination.

This process of building and breaking down to a final combination works well for several reasons:

Novice participants who are still learning - the performance of higher repetitions with fewer quick transitions allows them to establish needed pathways.

Fitter participants, new to the instructor - allows them to learn the new transitions and sequence while they are getting their workout with the higher repetitions.

Proficient participants, familiar with the patterns - repetitions allow them to apply intensity during the breakdown for an interval training affect.

With the evolution towards complexity, the curve of a steady state workout may be somewhat modified from the steady increase shown below in the traditional bell curve.

In a traditional linear build, movements are generally sequenced in order to increase the intensity to peak effort and decrease with a reversal of the build.

An example of this type of linear build in step training would be:

Basic (7.3)*
V-step (7.2)
Turn Step (7.5)
Over the Top (7.5)
Traveling Knees (7.7)
Traveling Repeater 3 - Side Leg (7.7)
Over the top w/ leap on 2 (8.9)
Across the Top w/ leap on 2 (9.6)
Traveling Knee w/ a hop on 2 (10.1)
Alternating Diagonal Lunges (10.4)

From this peak in intensity, patterns then decrease in intensity. While this method may provide a consistently steady increase and decrease, continuous repetition of the patterns does not provide much mental interest or challenge.

Complexity - Adding On

In complexity, when using the add-on technique - teaching one combination, then the next, repeating the 2 together, then teaching the next, then going back to the "top" - the steady state curve may modify somewhat according to the various factors.

The following illustration of a complex steady state workout, which cannot be exact due to all of the potential variables, simply demonstrates how there can be fluctuations in intensity. The leveling off represents the learning process or holding patterns and the climbs represent the performance of the repetitions or of the learned patterns.

With the add-on technique, patterns continue to be learned, added on and repeated from the top. If intensity options have been demonstrated and learned during the teaching phase, participants can maintain a high level of intensity performing the add-on sequence, even when they return to the initial combinations, which may use lower met expenditure patterns.

With complexity's shift in workout focus to developing an extended sequence of combinations, the building phase is often overlapped and intermingled with the peak work phase. The peak work phase may also be performed for a longer period of time by going back to the top of the sequence, which allows for a shorter recovery back to normal.

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Next: Complexity & Speed

*(met expenditure) - Source: Step Reebok Interval Training Manual