Within our programming at Endeavor Sports Performance, our athletes and clients are familiar with our many variations of single leg exercises. Whether the purpose of the exercise is to avoid any detrimental structural damage to the hips and femur colliding seen in bilateral movements with our athletic population, or to simply encourage single leg stability and strength, many athletes have used these specific exercises with much success – “Single Leg Stiff Legged Deadlifts”, “Goblet Split Squats”, and even “Rear Foot Elevated Split Squats” or better known throughout our programming as RFESS. (Many cringe when they see those 5 letters in their program.)
Anyway, last summer we used one of the following “hacks” to enhance single leg strength (among other qualities) to the “n-th” degree when the staff took part in a staff lifting program. The program in particular, was based off of the principles found within Triphasic Training. The following video is a result of sound eating, recovery, and of course beast mode training coming off of a eccentric focused phase.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH3JlRSpTQY]
However, I understand that not all are as blessed to have the genetics of a gorilla to hoist almost a quarter ton on their back – and reverse lunge it for reps. In fact, I’ve had many issues with single leg exercises after utilizing bilateral lifts like back squats and sumo deadlifts for a few years now. Lack of core stability, knees collapsing in, knees going over my toes – you name it, and I probably have committed such errors in the beginning of my training career. Now, my stability and likewise strength has increased ten-fold due to sound training as well!
So with that in mind, I have outlined the requisite steps for those just starting out with single leg exercises on STACK.com. Essentially, if you can bucket your issues into a few or less problems, the requisite solutions can be found in this article!
–> 5 Hacks to Solving Problems With
Single-Leg Exercises <–
Try these steps next time you have issues with your lunges, give one of these variations a try for a week or two and see if your movement patterns clean up!
Keep it funky.
MA