Leg day. Two words that send shivers down most individuals’s spines. Now, do you already know make it even scarier? Single-leg exercises. Absolutely terrifying!
Single-leg or unilateral leg exercises are extremely difficult, there is no doubt about that, but working them into your routine can offer some unique advantages that you simply won’t get with performing the exercise with each legs. Whether you are an athlete trying to get an additional edge or someone who’s trying to correct muscle imbalances, unilateral leg exercises are a must-add to your workout.
What Are Unilateral Leg Exercises?
As mentioned within the intro, unilateral or single-leg exercises involve only using one leg at a time. As an alternative of having the ability to distribute the burden between each legs, just one takes the total brunt, which, even with a lower load, increases the issue of the movement. You may have to deal with moving the burden in addition to staying balanced throughout the exercise.
13 Best Unilateral Leg Exercises
That is on no account a whole list. As an alternative, we included essentially the most effective unilateral leg exercises, as our team decided.
Lunges
We couldn’t come to a consensus with only one kind of lunges being essentially the most effective, so listed below are the three we could agree on:
*It must be noted that the dumbbell versions are shown, but be at liberty to start out with just body weight.
1. Reverse Lunge
Reverse lunges are an awesome solution to get the advantages of lunges while taking some stress off the knees and strengthening the posterior chain. But that is not all; moving backward improves your balance and stability, so that you’re getting an awesome workout and improving your coordination.
2. Curtsy Lunge
Consider the curtsy lunge a reverse lunge with a twist. By crossing your leg behind your body, you will increase hip stability and body coordination. All while hitting your glutes, quads, and inner thighs.
3. Walking Lunges
Walking lunges are the bane of many gym-goers’ existence. But there’s a very good reason why: they’re highly effective. Combining strength, mobility, balance, and cardiovascular work, walking lunges are an awesome solution to work your lower body muscles and improve your overall fitness level.
Step-Ups
This was one other category on which we couldn’t agree, but we were capable of narrow it right down to two variations.
4. Step-Up
Step-ups are an underrated solution to deal with single-leg strength. They’re mostly applicable for on a regular basis activities like going up the steps and are a improbable solution to deal with quad and glute strength. Adjusting the issue is an easy task, with lower objects being easier and better objects tougher. For some added difficulty, slowly lower yourself back right down to the bottom.
5. Lateral Step-Up
Fairly than specializing in the same old suspects, lateral step-ups put pressure in your hip abductors and adductors, two muscles which are often ignored. Athletes who need lateral mobility, resembling those that play defense in basketball, can profit from having a stronger hip complex.
6. Bulgarian Split Squat
This might be essentially the most dreaded unilateral leg exercise in our company. We predict the Bulgarain split squat was invented first as a way of torture fairly than an exercise. Take every thing that is difficult a couple of lunge and make it harder by lifting your back foot off the bottom. When you see someone repping these out within the gym, just know they’ve some serious lower body power.
7. Single-Leg Deadlift
One in every of our favourite exercises for targeting the posterior chain, we love how much single-leg deadlifts help with improving balance, and the stretch you possibly can get at the underside of the movement.
8. Pistol Squat
We’ll start by saying pistol squats will not be for novices. They require considerable strength, flexibility, and balance to perform. But in case you can get yourself into enough shape to start out incorporating them, your quads, glutes, and calves will reap some serious advantages.
9. Single-Leg Press
Using a leg press machine for unilateral work is probably the greatest ways to actually hit targeted sets. You haven’t got to fret about staying upright, in order that helps you to deal with muscle contraction. You furthermore mght get the additional benefit of having the ability to adjust leg press foot placement. Move your feet toward the highest. Slide your feet down.
11. Single-Leg Box Squat
Consider these as a warm-up to the pistol squat. The principle is identical, but on this case, you could have a security net in the shape of a box or bench. These are an awesome solution to help improve stability and balance safely.
12. Single-Leg Glute Bridge
It’s about time we put a hamstring and glute-focused exercise on this list. Not only will this glute bridge variation help construct up your backside, but your core goes to get a pleasant workout, too!
13. Single-Leg Calf Raise
It might be silly not to incorporate direct work for the calves. A powerful base starts at the underside, and your calves play an enormous role in keeping you upright. They’re essential for explosive movements in sports.
4 Suggestions To Incorporate Unilateral Leg Exercises into Your Routine
It might probably seem a bit daunting to try to start out using single-leg exercises in your workouts, so listed below are some tricks to make this process as painless as possible:
1. Start with body weight
Sometimes, your body weight will likely be an excessive amount of, and that is okay! If it’s worthwhile to do these exercises near something you possibly can hold onto, do it! Once you possibly can do it on your personal, be sure your form is ideal before you are trying moving on.
2. Quality not quantity
You will get more out of doing 10 slow controlled reps than 20 sloppy rushed reps. Single-leg exercises can feel like a punishment, but remember, you are doing it to enhance yourself. When you’re half-assing the exercises simply to get through, you are cheating yourself. When you’re alleged to do 10 reps but can only get 5 without breaking form, get the 5 and work on getting that sixth. You are setting yourself up for injury in case you perform these exercises incorrectly.
3. Strike a balance
Your workouts must be a mix of bilateral and unilateral movements. For each two bilateral movements, I prefer to use one unilateral movement. For instance, if I start my workout with squats after which move to leg press, I’ll follow that up with lunges.
Personal preference: I like starting with a bilateral movement, but that does not imply you cannot start with a unilateral one. Just be sure you are warmed up with whatever you are doing! If you could have a known weaker leg, start the exercise off with that one. That way, your stronger leg won’t outwork the one that should be brought up.
4. Steadily increase resistance
As you saw in among the video demos, you possibly can add resistance to those exercises for an excellent greater challenge. Make certain you begin small! A 5lb dumbbell may not look like loads, but it may well feel like a small automotive relating to unilateral work.
5 Advantages Of Unilateral Leg Exercises
So, leg day is miserable enough; why would you would like to add to the suffering? Listed below are five reasons you need to add single-leg movements into your lower body days.
1. Helps Correct Muscle Imbalances
You may have a dominant hand, so it could make sense that you furthermore may have a dominant leg. As you proceed along with your normal training, the dominant leg takes on more load, resulting in a muscle imbalance. Performing an exercise one leg at a time can show you the strength disparity between your legs, allowing you to make adjustments to avoid injury down the road.
2. Enhances Stability and Balance
Since you haven’t got a large, sturdy base, performing unilateral exercises fires up your stabilizer muscles out of your ankles all the best way up through your core. Strengthening these little muscles will increase overall stability, balance, and coordination.
3. Improves Athletic Performance
Irrespective of what sport you play, single-leg strength and power are vital to being successful on the sphere/court/whatever. In football and soccer, changing direction quickly involves planting off one foot, jumping on target and field requires explosiveness off one leg, and even kicking in swimming requires equal power from each leg to avoid veering off target. Unilateral training may help be sure you are equally powerful with either leg, resulting in a greater athlete.
4. Injury Prevention
Because those little stabilizers are working additional time to make sure you don’t flop over in the course of a single-leg squat, they’re helping keep your tendons and muscles strong, which might make or break relating to injury. Not all, but plenty of knee injuries could possibly be avoided with stronger muscles surrounding the joint.
5. Functional Strength
You are performing unilateral activities daily whether you already know it or not. Walking and going upstairs are each unilateral movements, and each would profit from targeted exercise.
For a fast anecdote, I met with an orthopedic doctor about some knee pain when going up and down stairs, and his first suggestion to me was to strengthen the muscles across the knee before some other interventions. Several months later, and I’ll happily take the steps over cramming into an elevator.
Wrap-Up
Unilateral leg exercises are an incredible solution to correct muscle imbalances, improve balance and stability, and increase strength. Adding single-leg exercises to your routine lets you construct a strong, well-balanced lower body that is able to compete at a high level or cruise up a number of flights of stairs with no problem. No matter your fitness goals, unilateral leg exercises deserve a spot in your workout regimen.
Try our 26 favorite body weight leg exercises!
