As time goes by and as I gain more experience as a strength coach, the 1-leg squat off a box or a bench is quickly becoming one of my favorite strength exercises for the lower body.

It is a very challenging exercise to perform even without weights.  It requires a decent amount of relative strength (strength to bodyweight ratio) to only be able to do it correctly.

If you have been following my blog for a while, you should know by now that I’m a huge advocate of single leg exercises.   Of all the lunges, split squats and others, I believe that the 1-leg squat off bench can give you the most benefits.  Compared to a lunge or a split squat, you don’t have any support of your non-dominant leg.  That makes it very hard to compensate or use too much of a push with the support leg.

Also because of the lack of support from the non-working leg, it makes it pretty challenging on your stability.  I am not a fan of unstable surface training, but I’m all for improving stability on a stable surface.  If an athlete can’t keep his balance trying to perform a 1-leg squat that tells me a lot about his stability.

The lack of stability in single leg support may lead to a host other problems.  Think about it for a second, all sports are played on one leg at a time with actions such as running, jumping, skating, cutting, etc.  If an athlete can’t be stable when performing an unsupported 1-leg exercise, he’s setting himself for injury.

The 1-leg squat usually requires little external loading compared to exercises such as a reverse lunge or a RFE split squat.  I am not saying that external loading is necessarily bad, and I do use these exercises myself with my athletes.  But even if you can load lower body exercises safely, it still adds compression to the spine.  According to research, axial loading (as in this case) is not what causes injury; repetitive and excessive flexion, extension and torsion combined with loading is what causes spine injuries.  However, even if axial loading doesn’t translate into injury there is still some wear that accumulate on the spine if you lift weights for years.  In the case of a pro athlete or an athlete trying to maximize the longevity of his career, it would be smart to lean towards exercises with less axial loading on the spine more than just once in a while.

Since the 1-leg squat can be a difficult exercise to perform for some athletes who’ve never done it before, you may be facing a couple problems.

One thing very common with young athletes performing the exercise is that they won’t be able to go all the way down and touch the ground.  An easy fix for that is to lower the box or stack plates on the ground, so the distance the athlete needs to travel to touch his heel down is less.

Shirt optional…

Another common problem with a lot of athletes is the inability to control the valgus collapse (the knee going in).  Some coaching cues can help solve the problem, but if it doesn’t seem to be working too well, you can use a technique called reactive neuromuscular training (RNT).  The idea behind RNT is to force the body into its natural compensation pattern to make the brain automatically correct it.  In this specific example, you would wrap a band around the athlete’s knee and pull it towards the valgus collapse.  The brain will naturally want to resist the tension, which will also correct the problem because you’ll be activating the muscles that actually prevent that valgus collapse.

Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter; it’s FREE and I’ll send you 3 bonuses!

It has been said that 80% of the American population is going to suffer from lower back pain at some point in their life….That’s A LOT of people!  The sedentary lifestyle of most human beings in 2012 is probably one of the main causes.  If you’re a strength and conditioning professional or a personal trainer chances are you’ll deal with a good number of people suffering from low back pain throughout your career.

The first thing to do is assess the client or athlete and identify where the problem lies.  You should also decide if referring out to a another health professional is appropriate.  Either way, you’ll want to use appropriate corrective strategies, if appropriate, to make the person correct the source of the problem.

What you won’t want though is to turn the training session into a rehab session.  You still want your clients or athletes to feel like they can get a training effect.  They definitely shouldn’t feel like a patient; that’s not your job.  You want to make them feel like athletes and you should focus on what they can do, rather than what they can’t do.

The big problem with most low back pain is that it limits your lower body exercise options quite a bit.  Most of the time any variation of bilateral squat or deadlift will be out.  So where does that leave us?

Although every person is different, there are options that are generally going to be safer than others.  The first thing I would tell you to do is stick to the “do no harm” rule: if it hurts don’t do it.  As simple as that.

That being said here are some options to consider with your low back pain clients and athletes:

Reverse Lunges

Depending on the type of back pain and how severe it is, your athlete might be able to get away with lunge variations using a front squat grip or a back squat grip, but usually DBs are going to be a safer alternative.

Rear Foot Elevated (RFE) Split Squat

In the video above, coach Dan Gabelman demonstrates a bodyweight RFE split squat. If your athletes are pain-free and strong enough, you can load them with 2 DBs or with one DB in the goblet position.

1-Leg Squat

This one might not be an option in some low back clients, but is usually OK with most if you keep a neutral spine throughout the range of motion, even if it means limiting that range of motion.  Someone who’s flexion intolerant and has limited hip mobility might round at the back in the bottom position, which could exacerbate the problem. Usually just bodyweight is plenty hard for most people, so you don’t even have to use any external load to make the exercise challenging.

Sled Drag

What I really like about sled drags for athletes or clients with low back problem is we can use so many variations of them, and also still load them pretty significantly without any negative effect on the low back.

Again, the “do no harm” rule is king.  Make sure you don’t do anything that hurts your athletes.  You should also be smart about what you prescribe them, make sure it’s not making their problem worse, and when in doubt refer out!

Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter….it’s FREE!! And I’ll also send you my 3 reports on speed training, soft-tissue work and shoulder injury prevention!!

As I’ve mentionned often in the past, I’m a firm advocate for single-leg training.  I believe it is truly one of the most important part of lower body training, especially for athletes.  It’s more functional, more sport-specific and better for injury prevention purposes.  At Endeavor, we use a ton of single-leg lifts with all our athletes, and most of the time we use these single-leg lifts as our main lower body strength exercise. 

Some of you might wonder what type of exercise we’re using, because let’s face it, you can’t DB reverse lunges all the time.  So here’s a little insight to the progressions we use with our single-leg lifts.

- The DB reverse lunge is the first variation we use 99% of the time.  Dumbbells keep your center of mass low, so therefore it’s not too hard on your balance compared to other variations. 

A reverse lunge will allow you to use a good push off your back leg, so it is easier for athletes and clients who don’t have a lot of single-leg strength.  A reverse lunge is also easier than a forward lunge because you don’t have a big deceleration component on your front leg like you have with a forward lunge.  This deceleration component makes it much harder to keep a proper upper body posture throughout your set.

- The second one on our progression list is still a reverse lunge, but in which we will change the center of mass by using a back squat grip or a front squat grip with a barbell.  Since the load is much higher, the center of mass moves up and it makes it harder to maintain your balance. 

Another variation we use to make it harder by moving the center of mass higher is to use dumbbells overhead.  This is a variation we will use more in conditioning circuits or to unload the joints, because the overhead position makes it very hard on the core and shoulder muscles.  So what happens most of the time is the core and shoulder muscles will be the limiting factors before you get to a weight that’s going to be heavy enough to be challenging for your lower body. 

- Third on the list would be the rear foot elevated (RFE) split squats with dumbbells (a.k.a. bulgarian split squats).  Having your back foot on a bench makes it harder to get help from your back leg compared to a lunge; so, more weight is supported on your front leg.  Some beginners don’t have the strength to do a RFE split squat; they need to do lunges for a little while to get their strength up before they can progress to a RFE split squat.

- Then, of course, you can progress the RFE split squat with dumbbells to a RFE split squat with a back squat grip or a front squat grip with a barbell.  Once again the center of mass is shifted higher, so it makes the exercise more difficult.

- Once you’ve mastered the reverse lunges and RFE split squat variations, you can progress to a slideboard reverse lunge.  Don’t let the name fool you, because it is much harder than any other lunging variation.  The reason is that because of the nature of the slideboard (slippery…duh!), you can’t really use your back leg to help you much; putting more weight on the back leg would make your foot slide away from your body and dangerous things could happen.  Just keep in mind that you have very little support from your back leg and you’re using mostly your front leg to pull yourself up, so you need a decent amount of single-leg strength before you try it.

- Last on the list is the single-leg squat and its variations.  The main reason why it’s the hardest one is because the leg you’re not using is totally unsopported, therefore it can’t help you at all.  You need very good single-leg strength in order to do this one; especially when you perform it with a full range of motion. 

All in all, this might not be the exact same progression we use with 100% of our client because there is many factors to consider when building a program; how old is the client? how much lifting experience does he have? how strong is he? does he have any restriction or injury? etc.  All these factors will dictate the progressions we’ll use with everyone of our athlete.  Also keep in mind that there are many other ways to progress single-leg lifts and make them more challenging, but this is a basic progression that should give you a pretty good idea on where to start and how to progress athletes and clients from there.