Uni-lateral / Bi-lateral Exercises
As much as we love bilateral exercises (using both legs equally at the same time) like regular squats, leg press and deadlifts, we also use a heavy dose of unilateral exercises (using a single leg at a time) to help build our athletes.
Most of us have strength imbalances in our body and we commonly see these imbalances most prevalent in the lower body.
And, if you continue to do only bilateral exercises, you will further develop imbalances which can lead to many issues long term, not to mention prevent you from making ongoing improvements in strength and performance.
Trust me, the last thing you want is your body compensating heavily on one leg all the time, especially when you’re moving a heavy weight!
To help you change things up a bit try this leg superset halfway through your leg workout.
So for example, your primary exercise of the workout might be heavy back squats or deadlifts, then follow that up with this superset.
This superset will help develop unilateral strength to improve athleticism, coordination and balance. You might notice that it will be much easier to perform the exercise on one leg versus the other.
As I mentioned, this is pretty common but it’s so important to identify this so you can work on improving it. I suggest always starting the exercise on the “stronger” leg first to set the target of how much you can lift and how many reps you can do.
Then you will have to work harder on the “weaker” leg to keep up and improve the development on that side. Just a note, these are both advanced exercises so pay close attention to the coaching cues I provide in the video descriptions and take your time working on the technique before you start increasing the weights.
Here’s the protocol : Unilateral Superset
1 A:
Bulgarian Dumbbell Split Squats – 3 sets x 10 reps/leg
1 B:
Unilateral Deadlifts – 3 sets x 10 reps/leg
You can use dumbbells or kettlebells for weights. Whichever you have access to or prefer to use.
Give this a try in the gym and let us know what kind of results you get!
Team Mammoth
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