The squat and deadlift are popular exercises that are fun to do. No doubt about it.

But, when it comes to athletic performance, durability, and resiliency for sport and everyday life, doing single leg exercises are absolutely key!

Key Benefits of Single Leg Exercises:

Single leg exercises offer many benefits to athletes and active adults, which include:

• Help to carryover to clean up side to side weaknesses in bilateral lifts

• Increase overall strength while effectively targeting specific muscle groups, such as the glutes and quads

• Improve balance and leg stability which can help improve your overall coordination and reduce the risk of injury.

Various movements like lunges, single leg deadlifts, and step-ups are some of the most common single leg exercises that we will program for an athlete or client.

Best Single Leg Stability Exercises to Use

Here are 6 single leg exercises we recommend trying to work into your routine.

1. Lunges

2. Single leg deadlifts

3. Step-ups

4. Goblet Landmine Skater Squat

5. Offset Landmine Skater Squat

6. Lateral Landmine Skater Squat

Exercise #1: Lunges

Exercise #2: Single Leg Deadlifts

Exercise #3: Step-Ups

Step-ups are great single leg exercise to testing your balance. Weighted or not, this is a great leg stability exercise.

All of those movements mentioned above, or variations, regressions, or progressions are all viable options to have in a well-structured training program.

Here are 3 different movements that can be performed in your program to add some variety and improve your overall strength on one leg.

Exercise #4: Goblet Landmine Skater Squat

Key Points:

• Place a barbell on the floor, in the corner, or in a landmine attachment.

• Hold with both your hands against chest.

• Standing on one leg, think of sitting back as if you were going to tap the opposite knee to the ground.

• Should be felt in the glutes, quads or hamstrings. Try not to let your knee go inside of your ankle.

Exercise #5: Offset Landmine Skater Squat

Key Points:

• Place a barbell on the floor, in the corner, or in a landmine attachment.

• Hold the bar in the arm of the non-working leg.

• Standing and balancing on one leg, think of sitting back as if you were going to tap the opposite knee to the ground.

• Should be felt in the glutes, hamstrings, or quads.

Exercise #6: Lateral Landmine Skater Squat

Key Points:

• Place a barbell on the floor, in a corner, or in a landmine attachment.

• Place the bar to your side, on the side of the leg that is not working.

• Have a slight lean towards the bar.

• Think of “sitting back and touching your opposite knee towards the ground.”

• This exercise should be felt in the side of your glute, glutes, quads, or hamstrings.

TL;DR: Best Single Leg Exercises 

Single leg workouts aren’t talked about much, but for athletes and active adults it can have great carryover for bilateral lifts. Single leg balance exercises also improve athleticism and durability for sport and everyday life.

Try incorporating the following single leg exercises into your program or gym routine to help improve your strength on one leg:

• Lunges Single 

• Leg Deadlifts 

• Step-Ups

• Goblet Landmine Skater Squat

• Offset Landmine Skater Squat

• Lateral Landmine Skater Squat

We also have many other posts about single-leg strengthening exercises, and lower body training:

• Feel Your Glutes More With Lunges

• Knee Pain With Single Leg Training? Try This

• Pistol Squats Vs. Skater Squats

• Ways To Train Lower Body With Knee Pain

We work with athletes and clients coming back from an injury and/or looking to improve performance and their health and wellness.

Get Started With Physical Therapy

When we work with an athlete or client coming back from an injury inside of Cressey Sports Performance in Hudson, MA, we make sure there are multiple exercises that focus on single leg strength. Single leg exercises may not be "cool", but being able to move well on one leg is important.

If you’ve been dealing with a nagging injury that just won’t go away? Are you going to continue to let it hang around and limit you in what you can and want to do? Take that first step and click HERE to get back to doing what you want and love to do.