Rethinking Single Leg Training

Welcome to the Minimum Effective Dose Podcast, where we discuss the art, science, and application of high performance strength and conditioning. Join Mike Perry and Brett Jones. as they share invaluable experiences veteran strength coaches, lecturers, and educators. Welcome to season four of the Minimum Effective Dose Podcast. Welcome back to the Minimum Effective Dose Podcast. My name is Mike Perry and I'm here with The Man The Myth, Brett Jones. Brett, what's up, man? How are you today?

Fabulous. Just plugging along. Um, busy, work, write, train, eat, sleep, repeat. Cool, that's it, huh? Fascinating. Training's going good though, getting ready to start the uh simple and sinister February. Uh since it was my idea, I have to do it. So I have no one to blame but myself. But uh if you didn't get the strong first newsletter and you're not aware of this,

feel free to join in at any time. There's a post on it on the strong first forum. Um so we'll be doing a hundred swings and ten get ups every day for the month of February. We are taking advantage of the leap year, getting that extra day of swings and get ups in twenty nine days. Somebody I know has an actual real birth. And uh

I think you just the party we already talked to the sponsors, uh by the way. I forgot to tell you, we we talked to the sponsors of the podcast, and uh they weren't able to get Gillette, but T D Bank is reserved. So um we should be good to go. I just, you know, a couple uh, you know, crossing those T's and those lowercase J's and uh, you know, go from there. So, but besides that.

Perfect. So yeah, join in. Um, hunter swings tend to get up today, in addition to your regular training, not in place of. But we're going seventy, eighty percent of your usual working bell and uh gonna do a yeah, see how creative we can get and how many different ways we can get to a hundred swings and ten get ups in a given day. Did five sets of twenty, two arm swings. as a practice yesterday and I immediately regretted coming up with the simple and sinister February.

We'll see what I have to say. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not gonna be doing that. Um yeah, I just uh I just won't. I don't this exercising thing, you know, it's a bit overrated. And uh I prefer. Recommending it for other people.

Yes, you know, do as I say, not as I do. Um, no, I'm just kidding. Uh, anyways, we actually are going to talk about one of my favorite. single leg training. And we're going to talk about the squat. sort of everything in between and uh a fairly complicated type of exercise. I also think we overcomplicated as coaches. And uh so so that's what we really want to talk about today. And um but before we do, Brett. Why should we be adding in single leg training into our into our our programming?

Uh short story long. Basically everything we do is uh athletically is in some form of single egg. propulsion, absorption, uh, or transition between split to single egg stance or from symmetrical to single egg. probably the most common posture uh foot position, stance position that we're gonna operate in. And being good in symmetrical stance doesn't mean you're good in single leg stance.

Actually doesn't mean you're good in split stance either, so which is hence why we check off the But um, you know, this is something that I before I had had uh Let's see. Two thousand nineteen I had uh my right knee scoped for a cartilage tear that happened in 2004. So I went 15 years with a pretty good cartilage tear and then ended up needing to get it taken care of. Well, in the buildup to that, I started to realize that my power was down on my swings. I was having some issues.

And I added back in some single leg deadlifts and single leg training. I got a couple, you know, a month or so into that. And I'm like, maybe I don't need the surgery. Uh now it was still pinching, was still painful when I did things in a certain But it made such a difference. And uh that was, you know, with the Mind the Gap program and things that have that I've put out recently, like that single leg stance, strength and efficiency is one of the things that that I that I hammer away at because

It's super important. Um, so sorry. I I did say short story long, didn't

You did and you warned us and uh you s you know I was still surprised with how much you just you didn't stop talking. No, just kidding. Um so let's let's talk about Um, you know, when we look at single leg training, uh, in my opinion, uh, it's probably one of the most overscrutinized style of training.

Um, and because I think a lot of people use it as a comparative tool against bilateral. Like people like, yeah, it's single, you know, unilateral or bilateral. It's like, yes, do them both, do them all, right? But For some pe for some reason, people think that single leg training is just not nearly as effective. you know, the bilateral stuff. And um

Well I I I disagree because I've I've tried both and I've worked twenty years with athletes on both and they both have their place with the individual. So um I think the most important thing we need to understand is if you are going to make blanket statements, cool, make blanket statements. But um

Lanket statements are wrong. So don't don't be surprised when people just sort of say, well, there's context to that. Well, yeah, there's always going to be context to that. But my point being is either or use it in the right tool. I mean, a squat's a squat. I think everybody should squat. I think everybody should do a version of a squat or squat in some way, shape, or form. It doesn't

particular way, but going back to single leg, most people suck at teaching single leg training. They suck at teaching a deadlift or a squat and they have never learned how to do it whatsoever. They basically tell people to stand on one leg and hope it goes well. Perfect. No, no, I mean, you go into any any commercial gym. And even gyms, honestly, like uh regular gyms, like you're gonna see a if anybody's doing single leg work, true single leg work, it's probably gonna look like trash.

And that's just the reality of it because people don't know how to teach or actually how to put together progressions on, hey, like where should you be? What is the joint alignment? What are the positioning? Blah blah blah blah blah. Like they just don't take the time to learn. They're just like do stuff on one leg. That'll help. That'll help for kids.

But like, not for like 17-year-olds where you're just like, here, grab a weight and squat up and down. Like, you need some context. And but people butcher it. So How do you introduce single leg training, Brett?

Well, let's go from the ground up because we need to make sure that uh our ankle mobility is going to support that uh Go back down to the foot. Sorry. Go back down to the foot. We need to make sure that the those medial, lateral, and transverse arches, uh, the torse bones are mobile. We need to make sure the ankle mobility is good.

Um Daniel uh David Gray uh I think has a lot of stuff out right now talking about um really doing stuff with a floating heel so that you're loading the foot uh differently, not just trying to maintain a uh flat. stance but loading uh elevating or floating the heel on uh different activities. So right back to clearing the ankle, making sure your ankle mobility is good. Part of that is midfoot mobility and being able to do that stuff.

Um, one of the easiest, like you and I are both old enough to know that when we first started going to the gym, there were probably three or four two by fours or two by fours nailed together that you did your single leg calf, that you did your calf raise. Those are gone. Like you can't find those in a gym now. Um, so in addition to the foot and ankle, making sure we clear the mobility and and um effectiveness there, uh single leg calf rays.

Bent knee, straight knee. Um, just getting a little bit of that in. Now, I'm s we talked about this in the last podcast or a couple podcasts ago. I don't run and I don't jump. And I think it was the tendon episode. I don't run, I don't jump. Um, I walk. Um, but if I was gonna start running and jumping, I would get in some low-level plymetric or power metric activities to start loading the structures of the foot and in Achilles to prepare.

But these single leg caffeines Bent knee, straight knee, um is a good thing to keep in the routine so that you maintain the strength from the ground up. Then as we come up the chain, uh we're really looking at that knee dominant versus hip dominant uh sort of movements and uh getting in some sort of single leg squat. My preferred single leg squat at this point is the airborne one. Um and obviously the single leg deadlift, uh, but making sure I get 15, 20 degrees if needed.

So that's that's how I approach it kind of from the ground up. Um always gonna make sure foot and ankle mobility is good, some sort of single leg calf raise or activity is in, and then build in the the uh a squat and or and squat and deadlift variation.

No, I love how you were talking about, you know, paying attention to the calf and the foot because, you know, having having people in that tripod position and and and understanding where the weight distribution should be.

that sets the sort of the foundation for, like you said, stacking everything above. So um it was it was kind of cool. This past weekend we did a speed seminar with uh Jeff Trainer from the Canons and we had uh pedestal footwear come out and they actually gave all of the attendees some pedestals to wear.

And it was interesting because when we were talking about like a midfoot strike and we put them on the platform at our gym, it was like you could hear some kids. It was like third, third, third, third, thud. And I was like, wow. And I was like, guys, you hear that? I'm like, that's like jumping rope on your heel.

I said, look, I need you to be, I need you, I shouldn't here be able to hear you. And then we had them just pay attention to the sound. And it was so cool because it's like they started to use their their connective tissue and now they're not just slamming their joints. They're actually learning how to absorb force.

and recreate that force to go, you know, obviously up and down in that that rhythmic type movement. But it was just really, really a nice teaching tool, right? And an aha moment for a lot of people. So I I I will say this if you have the opportunity to teach. Uh and the time, of course, in this situation to teach someone about kind of the basics of the foot. I'm not saying you have to break out the anatomy.

tripod, you know, good positioning. How do we have a strong stable foot? And then from there, you know, if you can get them in like a set of pedestals or depending on what your gym allows, having them feel the ground. is gonna be super, super important for their overall development and their single leg competency because

You know, you put a kid in a pair of Nike Air Maxes and they're going to be all over the shop for for several different reasons. So, you know, paying attention to the foot and the calf is is so stinking important. Hundred percent. And uh now I I'll I'll sit here and fully admit that taking lower leg training advice from me.

should make people laugh because when I wear shorts, it looks like I'm riding a chicken. Um I I don't have much going on in the lower leg department. Um genetic, you know, my dad ran for years and trained aggressively and never had cats. His dad had like thirty inch ham hocks sitting off of his lower legs and had these freaking massive calves. And I'm like, Well, I guess that skipped a generation. Um

So I didn't get it. Uh skipped two generations. Anyway, um, so you know, I do remember Bill Kramer at a NSCA saying you doing a talk on hypertrophy and he said Everything that I just discussed with hypertrophy applies to everything but chacabs. Yeah. Those who got genetic.

Yeah really hard to change. And there's there's a good bit of truth to that, I think. Um but you know, size aside, because only bodybuilders would worry about that. Um We want to start the conversation right down there at the foot. Encourage some sort of I love what you said about uh don't let me hear you. Um, you know, one of the one of the best ways you can evaluate an athlete running, close your eyes. Let'em run by ya.

If you hear him coming from thirty steps off, You already know what you need to work on. Well, and and look, little context to that, because there are times where we want to hear you. Absolut. So like if you're sprinting. And your goal is to apply, you know, a ridiculous amount, what four to six to eight times body weight into the ground, you're probably gonna hear something. We're gonna hear something. Um so when you're accelerating.

Yeah, I I I'm gonna hear some stuff. I'm gonna hear your feet moving, right? Um, you know, but when I hear you slowing down, if I hear pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. I mean, you're slowing down, right? But are you slowing down? to the point where your your joints are taking the brunt or is are you teaching your body how to absorb

that load and dissipate the load through various athletic positions with the tendons and connective tissue and joints doing what they're supposed to do. Right. It's a, it's an in-concert thing. It's not just a, you know, uh It's not just a one one roll thing where the tendons just work or or the the muscles just work. It's what you'll see is when people are very efficient in producing force and absorbing force is it looks effortless and rhythm at very rhythmic. But if you were to hear it.

Uh you wouldn't you would hear you would hear the sound in the right spots if that makes sense. And uh you'd be amazed at like when you're teaching people like elasticity and pogos, right? With elasticity and pogos, yeah, you I want I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna hear your feet a little bit.

But if we're working on single leg medial lateral hops where I'm focusing on deceleration and and teaching the entire system to coil and and absorb energy and then reproduce that energy, I don't want to hear a damn thing.

So I I think like you said, I mean the sound is super important, but to dig deeper the context of what's going on, because if you just say I don't want to hear you, then well that's you know, we have to dig deeper. So I just wanted to No, I love it. And uh makes me think of uh the stationary sidestepping swing. as the ballistic single leg uh version of a swing that has you transitioning, absorbing and redirecting force uh more through a single leg um sort of activity.

Not necessarily germane to the conversation, but uh, you know, there it is. Uh Jermaine, Jackson, Tito, Jackson five. Uh Tito's? Sorry. Um little Brian Regan. humor there. So um Yeah, so if we come up from the foot and ankle, uh we've established our uh good mobility and stability through the arches. We've got some sort of single leg. Um calf rays or to your point, pogoing and things like that going on for the lower leg. We come up when we hit.

something like a pistol or single leg squat and a um airborne lunge, we're really gonna need that ankle mobility. We're really gonna need that stability coming up from the foot. And um that The the pistol being Maybe something that's uh held up as the ultimate single leg exercise. And there's a lot of different vari variations in that, right? You can stand up on a box, hang one leg down, you don't have to hold it up directly in front of you.

Um, you can uh sit to a box and stand up. There's there's lots of different variations there that can be accessible to a very wide range of people. Um, so what what have you seen with uh single leg squats and your folks?

Well There needs to be a degree of competency from the get-go, right? Because some people you get them on one leg and they can't even they they can't even do anything um with it. So and and I think and we've talked a little bit about this of how to to progress things, but um I think when you're implementing single leg training from the get go. I think having two hands on something and and and sort of

giving people training wheels, right? And having them use the hand assistance to teach them about the slot, the range, what the groove should feel like, right? Um, and and I use the training wheels analogy simply because, you know, like I tell people, look, with training wheels, you start people, you start the kid on the bike.

And they can just ride, just get them used to riding. And then what do you do? Right? You you raise the the training wheels up a little bit so they have to find that balance point and they have to learn the ability to weight shift because essentially that's what they're doing when they ride a bike, is they're trying to figure out how to manage.

uh when their body goes left and right. And that eventually, right, you you take them off and you put'em in the grass and they're gonna fall a few times and they'll figure it out. Um, but we need to do the same thing. We have to think about the same progression with single leg training because people assume it's just like a three or four step process. But you know, I think step one is is like Brett said, do they have the prerequisite mobility to get into a position?

And what I like to do is I like to sort of chip away at a partial range of motion. I will have them hold on to, you know, put two parts of the cage where they feel super rock solid, right? Like, you know, they they're not going anywhere. And I'll just start them in a symmetrical stand.

And I'll, you know, I'll have them do like uh uh you know feet together, kind of push the knees out. I'll have them flex both knees, both hips, and and just say, hey, look, all I need you to do is move one leg off the ground and just hang out there. it and use your hands as much as you need to. And we're just going to hang out at the bottom. And for a lot of people, the the bottom of that range of motion is maybe a three inch drop in range of motion. And here's why this is important.

The first three sort of degrees as you drop down, whether it's single leg. Squat or deadlift is going to look very, very similar because in order to have a quality single leg squat, there has to be a slight posterior weight shift, and you still need that posterior weight shift for a single leg hinge and or deadlift. So the first initial sort of drop. when you go from the standout, let's call it the locked out position.

And then your body starts to go and sit into that. We should see this sort of rhythm in which the hip will go back, the knee will go forward. And when the knee goes forward, that's the same time the ankle joint getting into a positive shine. So I think the beginning part of teaching people how to get that bone rhythm. Remember the old talk about bone rhythm with Z Health back in the day? And they talked about it with like the split squad. I actually love that idea.

of making sure that sort of all of the joints that are involved in that one compound movement are moving at a similar rhythm. And I think that's a super important strategy for people because a lot of people will execute their single leg training.

With one joint maybe moving a little bit faster than the other. And that's one of the reasons why they get out of control. Maybe they they dropped into their hips too quickly or they go too far back. But you know, I think the rate at which the hip, the knee, and the ankle work together in concert and the rhythm at which those joints move is so important for people to understand when it comes to quality single leg training that you're not going to have to reteach down the road.

Yeah, definitely. And I I love the training wheels analogy. And you know, I've I've said at workshops for years that uh I don't care if you need mellow jazz, scented candles, and uh comfy pillows. scattered around you and uh you know, two dowel rods to hold on to. I I'll give you whatever training wheels you need to feel comfortable and confident in that single leg stance. Cause going into a single leg stance for a good number of folks is scary.

Um now if we separate out the more athletic population from the middle-aged to senior population, uh, we can see that there's some differences there. for the young person or the young athlete that is not confident in single leg stance. That's probably related to with a potentially a previous injury, or um maybe they have some sort of uh bit of a visual vestibular thing uh going on that's kind of influencing them being comfortable and single-leg standing.

for the older population can still be visual or vestibular, but usually it's because they've fallen um or they're just they feel wobbly and wobbly equals I'm going to fall. And that's scary. And so, you know, it's it's not the time to make fun of people. It's the time to say, Here's some training wheels. We're gonna make this as accessible to you uh as possible.

Um, the other conversation when we start talking about the bone rhythm and stuff like that is, and I'll use myself as an example, as I always do, because I am the example of everything.

Let's talk about me. It's what what can I say about me that I haven't said already? Um my hip doesn't flex past a certain So for me to do something like a single egg squat or even an airborne lunge, I'm going to max out my ankle and my knee uh differently than somebody that can actually flex their hip past a certain

And so you want to watch for those things as you're looking at the bone rhythm and you're watching somebody perform single leg deadlift, uh airborne lunge, single leg squat, you want to watch for when does one joint stop. And that's going to be really uh, if you can start picking up on that, you're gonna help a lot of people with their single leg squad or single leg dead. Yeah. It was actually useful for me to talk about myself.

Well, because you were warned. There was a there was like a little threat where we planted the seed of like you're just thinking subconsciously. Going back to, you know, various different exercises, I think we need to we need to really step back and understand that there's more of a teaching progression. And that we have to just slow it down and make sure that we know the limitations. We need slow strength before we have fast strength. And that's why, in my opinion, if we start these movements.

And and that idea of bone rhythm can be used both in a slower movement and obviously in a faster movement, but you know, whether it's a single leg deadlift from a box or it's an airborne lunch. the rhythm in which we execute that is going to carry over when we add speed. So it's actually, I look at it as a continuum, not just a we're going to do single leg deadlifts and then we're going to do single leg hop. It's just like if you if you teach it in the right way and you sort of

educate the people, say, hey, look, this is this is a very, very similar movement you're going to see in change of direction and lateral movement. Then you can you can It sometimes it syncs a little bit differently. And it's going to allow you to teach it a little bit better too, if you actually break down athletic big based movements with people. So, but like I said, like you were talking about.

You've got to be careful because, you know, some joints you can blow past the joints and overuse things. I think about, you know, you were talking about with your low back and and with your hip. It's like you know. That if you were to do a bunch of pistols on that side, eventually your back is just gonna go. You just know that. And cause you you're stopping range of motion at one point and you're making up for it elsewhere. And eventually the elsewhere gets screwed.

100%. And so we, you know, go back down to the ankle, ankle stops. Usually you're going to collapse the arch and valgus the uh the the knee, which will actually internally rotate the hip and steal motion from there. So go right back down to the ground. And as you're watching somebody perform like a single leg squat.

Um Look at what's happening. Uh see when the ankle stops. Look at when the hip stops. Watch what's happening at the knee. Um, these are these are things that can make all the difference in safely progressing somebody into um into the single leg squat, which actually is another reason I love the airborne one. Where you talked about with the single leg squat, there's still that initial backward movement to uh maintain center of mass.

Airborne lunge, you're pretty daggone straight down. It is uh it is a more straight drop. I I look at photos of somebody in the bottom of a a good airborne lunge and man, it looks like they're sprinting. Yeah. You know, it's it's a really strong positive shin angle position where you can really see somebody drive out of the hole and produce some good force. You can bring the ground up to them so they touch their knee to an elevated object and control the range of motion.

I think it is a more accessible single leg squat. that eases the transition towards something like a pistol in a in a a much different manner. Um and we we st we're gonna talk about single leg deadlift here in a minute, but uh I when I'm doing uh Mm. With with most of my people, um, I will I would rather start airborne lunge and a feet together squat assisted, the the way that you were talking about it, or counterbalanced with a kettlebell out front.

as if somebody comes in with the goal of performing a pistol, I'm gonna start with single leg deadlift, airborne lunge, and the the uh some sort of feet together, quotation marks. Um doesn't have to be. Um either assisted or with a counterbalance. That's that's my progression there. Um and I I I think the airborne lunge um I think the air airborne lunge wins in in a lot of different ways.

Yeah, that's been my go-to for the longest time. And and I think one of the reasons why I really started to fall in love with that exercise is when I was trying to get to the point where I was, you know, doing the beast tamer challenge and I was doing heavy, heavy pistols, I was like, I you know, I I did I did the forty day with with pistols, which don't ever do that if you're listening to this podcast, it's the dumbest thing you could ever do. I mean, I got super strong, but I totally paid my

My author a lot of money. You gotta go slow with this stuff. You gotta absolutely go slow with this stuff. And um get the progressions, nail it down and make sure that You're safe and you get that rhythm and get that load because speed can be another form of that compensation too. And um, with that airborne lunge, don't forget about the bottom position and the concentric start.

Because a lot of people bounce off the bottom. And you'll see it, especially if you put a but like if you put out a foam pad. They'll if you start it from the top, which is a good thing to do, um, you can descend and you you'll see people and they pop and they bounce off the bottom. That is the range that they need to actually work. So what I would try to do is

Start them two to three boxes up, maybe like 10 or 12 inches. Get them to feel the weight shift, get that counterbalance, get them to zip up, create tension. And then go from the concentric up because the concentric part or that start. is going to be the hardest part from a range of motion standpoint. And we know from a from a lifting standpoint, the concentric start or the initial rep is what, how much more energy does it take? Isn't it something like a a crazy amount of percentage?

Thirty five percent uh more energy. Yeah. Yeah. So no that those are the things I you know I wanted to hit with the airborne launch because It's a money exercise and especially with athletes too, like you said, that sprint. I'll use a variation of that assisted as a single leg plyo. It's a concentric start, single leg plyo. It's not a true plyo, I guess, because we're not, you know, we're starting from a concentric or dead stop.

Let me tell you, the concentric strength that you can build out of that position and because there's no eccentric loading or minimal, you can do a lot of volume and not get super, super smoked. Yep. And if we were to flip the script and and uh maybe uh the the next stop after the ankle and s single leg uh lower leg conversation would have been single leg down.

Yeah.'Cause I think we would both start people there versus the single leg squat progression. And um so the single leg deadlift, and this may feel out of order to the people watching, but you just had an aha moment or you just had a boy, those guys are idiots moment. Either way, it's gonna stick in your brain. Um, and so did we do it on purpose or did we just get things out of order? We'll never tell.

But the single leg deadlift is probably where we're going to start uh most people um after we have that ankle, foot, and calf raise or single-legged calf raiser uh conversation. So the single leg deadlift, um, one of the things that I'm kind of uh big on right now is um establishing single leg stance and dragging that big toe while on the ground. Um and eventually you'll run out of ground. But as you do that, as you reach back, you're going to bend that stance leg.

And you're going to get the 15, 20 degrees of knee bend that we need to really activate the hip and not just the hand. When you treat this as a stiff-legged exercise and you don't bend the knee, yeah, you're gonna get the hamstrings and quit using your single-leg deadlifts to feel the hamstrings. Use your single leg deadlifts to strengthen your hips.

and hamstrings and you know use that reach back. Now, can the reach back be taken too far? Yes. So you're gonna scrape that big toe as long as you can, but no, don't extend it beyond that. And for 99% of the people that I get started on a single-legged deadlift, I just have them scrape the toe back until they feel like it's going to leave the ground and come back. They're never purely single legged.

for a decent period of time while they're learning that single leg deadlift. Now the other thing we can other things we can do, give'em a wall to hold on to. Give'em two dowel rods. Uh let'em put their hands on a barbell that's in a squat rack. So uh or let them use the the upright of a of a squat rack. Uh really powerful uh to give somebody the training wheels they need to really get into that hip hinge because we still want that posterior weight.

And instead of just initiating with that posterior weight shift, the the way you talked about it with single leg squat and single leg deadlift. Now we're continuing with that backward movement of the hip. Um remember in my bizarre little world, a knee-dominant exercise is uh a squat is one where the dominant motion of the hips is down, a deadlift. The hips go backwards. So single leg deadlift fits that uh to a T. And then the one thing I want to add there is the hip airplane.

Where we get somebody in a very secure position, uh, give them something to hold on to, get them into that single egg stance. then have them rotate the hip open as far as they can, and then have them close that hip down as far as they can. And have them move through that range of motion, same way we would we would do a cat cow, um, in order to have somebody begin to feel fine neutral with their spine. Now I can do the same thing at the hip and pelvis.

And really rotate that hip up and rotate that hip down. Let them explore the range of motion. Oh, your toes turned out. Oh, this happened. Oh. Relax. Uh there, Francis. Um that that's a stripes uh reference for anybody that didn't get it. I'm not making fun of anybody named Francis. It's a movie quote. I mean I'm not. You just made the list. Um another stripes quote from Francis. Um so Scrape the big toe, get that knee bend, use your hip airplane, take your time building your single leg double.

All right, I'm gonna take that one step further. Go. I knew this. All right, let's talk about when you are introducing a single leg pattern and you are implementing hand assistance, dowel assistance, whatever. It's important to understand are you trying to use the assistants to just integrate a new pattern, like literally have them feel the up and down motion with training.

Right. Is is that one thing? Or are you just trying to get them competent in a specific range of motion via isometrics and then starting to work through? And I think, you know, a lot of people say stability before strength. And yes, that's important, but you still have to have a little bit of strength as well. So what I would do is I would actually approach it from both ends.

Right. I would have those individuals go through a range of motion and just say, hey, listen, I want you to work through this range of motion and your goal is to get five reps. And just use your hands as little as possible. That's it. And just make sure you keep your mechanics. That's all that's all I'll cue. I'm not like writing down they had this amount of pressure, right? All I want them to understand is the continuum for them right now is.

We can't, we're not going to change the height of the box. So what we have to do is you have to make sure that as you are doing these repetitions, you are relying less and less on your hand assist. And that's something that people don't talk about enough is just that that sort of conversation about if you just use your hands all the time, you'll never learn. And it's okay to fail. Right. So I think we need to really have that conversation. But again, hit it from both.

Have them hold on as tight as they want, hit the pattern for a range of motion where they feel comfortable. And then on the other one, have them do some positions, some ISOs where they don't use their hands and they they have to stabilize each position. And if you attack it from both ends. They're going to be competent a lot quicker, in my opinion.

Absolutely. Um, you know, you don't have to go zero to hero. You can uh you can let somebody learn and earn uh their way through the single egg um deadlift and single leg stance uh progression. And and the confidence fan thing does come back all the time. Cause I work with people all the time. Oh, you know, are you doing any single deadlifts? Yeah, I'm really bad at it.

Well, okay. Well let's let's take a look. No, I'm really bad at'em. Okay. Well let's let's go ahead and take it. No, I have to step down when I'm when I'm in the middle of a set. I'm like, I do too. Yeah I do a set of single leg deadlifts as part of my warm-up every every time I work out and there's days. Where I feel pretty rock solid. And there's days where I step out of position in a set of five on each leg. I'll step out of position two or three times on each leg. Yeah.

So, you know, you don't you don't have to be super uh you know, nobody's gonna be a rock star at this stuff. Um and yes, I'm fully aware of the commercials about not using the term rock star.

commercial. But anyway, the uh give somebody the time they need to to build into this. Um And, you know, in reference to programming and and load and and things like that, I mean, uh, you can look up stuff on bilateral deficit.

the stuff that Coach Boyle's talked about and and there is research on Um what you can put together in loading the right side and the left side will probably you'll be able to Even though you won't be handling as much as you would in a symmetrical stance, when you add what you loaded on the right side and what you added on the left side, it will be greater than what you were able to load symmetrically. So the the bi bilateral deficit is just a little

I don't. It's it's a way to look at how loading a single leg has an overall systemic effect. Um and parts are greater than the whole, so to speak, when you when you start doing that. Um, but you know, how much load do you need? I don't know, for an athlete, I'm probably looking for half body weight for eight to ten reps on each leg in a single leg deadlift in a single arm contralateral, meaning the load is in the hand opposite the foot that's on the ground. Um

I mean, that's pretty strong. That's that's I mean, if you could do that, you're yeah, that's yeah, that the cover to check. If you can do that, you're gonna do all right with the majority of things that you ask your body to do athletically of, you know, barring of course you you know, you're not You're doing all the other things, but like from an from a strength standpoint, that'll that'll probably check the boxes for for

Yeah. And I think, you know, airborne lunge, if we're gonna load it up, this is where uh bands can be very effective. Kettlebells can be effective up to a point. Uh a weight vest can be a good way to do it. And honestly, I don't know how much we really need to load the airborne lunge beyond a a small amount.

Single leg squat. You can look at some of the stuff Coach Boyle's put out there as far as how they load up their single leg squat progressions. A lot of different ways that you can do it. But here's the thing. If you reach a point where you've got, you know, a hundred pounds of chain, a fifty-pound uh weight vest on, and you've got uh dumbbells in each hand, and and it takes you, you know, 10 minutes to get everything in position for you to do a set. Just go star squad.

Just go go go do something where you can get the load that you want. 'Cause you've you're you're pretty much past the point of where you need to be um with that, in my opinion. Uh but you can load up single leg squat, uh airborne lunge, not quite as much. Uh single leg deadlift, you can load up a lot. Um, and programming-wise, you can single-leg deadlift somebody to death. You can use a moderate volume of airborne lunge and a small volume of the single leg squat.

Yeah, no, you gotta be y yeah, uh the devil is in the dose and uh I have uh overtrained all of those. And uh uh yeah, it's uh, but no, honestly, powerful, powerful exercises when performed correctly. But um they're they're very skill oriented and and I don't don't treat single leg training like people treat running they just treat it like everybody should be able to do it so just do it like

Anybody can do a single leg squat, but not well. Anybody can run, but not well. So treat it as a skill. Spend a little bit more time developing that, especially honestly, if your goal is to be an athlete and you want to play any sport. Like learning how to be competent on one leg is It's a game changer. And I don't I don't use that word a lot, but it's a game changer. You don't anymore.

Anywho, we'll we'll talk about we'll talk about that again uh at some point. But hey, before we uh talk about my shortcomings, um anything else you want to talk about before we We we wrap it up today, bud? Matt, follow this from the ground up. Uh take a look at the foot, ankle, um, build in the single leg deadlift first, control the range, use your training wheels, maybe airborne lunge before single leg squat, although squat to a uh a box is pretty expensive.

is very accessible. Um and I'll s I'll make the bold statement that uh everybody that can should be doing some sort of single edge. Period. If you are training, you should be doing some sort of single leg work if it's if it's uh possible for you. Um so Get to it. Do it. Do your single leg work. Uh

Excellent. All right, buddy. Well, another one in the books. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. Do us a huge favor and leave us a positive review on whatever platform you're listening to. And if you enjoyed this podcast, share with your friends, family, colleagues, cousins. co workers, pretty much anybody. Have a good day.

Hey everybody, Coach Mike here. Thank you so much for your support. We truly appreciate it. If you could do us a huge favor, please give us a positive review on whatever platform you're listening to. And also, please share this with your friends, colleagues, teammates, and fitness enthusiasts. Thank you again for supporting the Minimum Effective Dose Podcast.