A huge and very important component of our performance programs at DSP is single leg training. Sports are played on one leg, so an athlete’s ability to be explosive on one leg has to be addressed in their strength work.
Single leg training has been shown to improve Rate of Force of Development (RFD) and contribute to power output. When done with an eccentric focus, single leg training will build muscular hamstrings that can be used to increase sprinting performance. Most importantly, they also allow you to address strength deficits and asymmetrical limitations that are hard to address with bilateral exercises.
Before we introduce single leg work, we make sure that our athletes have solid bilateral squat ability. Single leg exercises require an athlete to have a good baseline of strength and should be used with discretion for those new to Velocity Based Training (VBT).
Today I wanted to show you a single leg explosive complex that we’ll use with advanced athletes that are peaking and ready to begin a sport season.
When preparing our athletes for an upcoming season, we’ll focus on exercises that are more reactive or concentric focused. In other words…more explosive! The weights are lighter (55% of Max) and the goal is to move the weights as fast as possible.
The athlete in the video, Hughes Page is preparing for his upcoming travel baseball season. Although he is a baseball player, we would use this same programming with all of our athletes. After all, who couldn’t use a little more speed and power?
Check it out!
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