3 Single Leg Exercises You Should Be Doing
Squats and deadlifts are a leg day’s bread and butter, with single leg work typically an afterthought. The general (albeit, misconstrued) consensus labels unilateral exercises as nothing more than light accessory work. That said, single leg strength training offers a myriad of benefits.
Benefits of single leg exercises:
3 Single Leg Exercises You Should Be Doing
It’s common to develop a love/hate relationship with these movements. You’ll love the gains, and probably hate actually doing them. Then again, anything worth gaining is worth earning.
Here are three single leg exercises you should be doing.
1. Single Leg Squat
You can think of the single leg squat as a really strict step-up. The difference is you’re placing all of the emphasis on one leg with no assistance from the other.
During step-ups, it’s common to “spring up” with the back leg and use a bit of momentum to step onto the box. With single leg squats, you stand on top of the box and “squat” down with your top leg. As you reach the bottom of the movement, tap your heel to the floor merely for depth indication and push solely with your top leg.
How to do it:
I prefer single leg squats over the infamous pistol squat for a number of reasons:
2. Skater Squat
The skater squat is basically a reverse lunge on steroids. Rather than bringing your back foot to the floor, you keep it elevated and tap your knee to ground before squatting back up.
How to do it:
As with some of the more advanced single leg progressions, the skater squat can initially have a steep learning curve. That said, you can scale it back using some upper body assistance as shown below.
3. Single Leg RDL
The RDL or Romanian Deadlift has been long been regarded as one of the primary lifts to strengthen the posterior chain (low back, hamstrings, and glutes). The single leg variation adds to it’s awesomeness by increasing glute and hamstring involvement.
Typically, you would perform the single leg RDL holding a kettlebell or dumbbell in one hand while balancing on the opposite leg (this is called contralateral loading). That said, you have an array of variations at your disposal.This is just one of many.
How to do it:
Summary
Single leg exercises are more than just light accessory work after your squats and deadlifts. Load them heavy for bigger, stronger legs sans the nagging low back pain that can often be associated with the barbell lifts.
