Single Leg Strength, part 1

This series is for Flatlanders and BMX’ers in general, but the same principles apply for everyone I train. These are great exercises to work toward mastering for everyone. This is reposted from the original series in my Instagram account.

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Single Leg Strength, part 1 This series is for Flatlanders and BMX’ers in general, but the same principles apply for everyone I train. These are great exercises to work toward mastering for everyone. There are bilateral (2 legged) exercises I’d suggest doing also, but we’ll get to these in later installments. Single leg exercises have a host of benefits. They require foot, ankle, leg, hip, and core strength when done right. They also let you identify and correct imbalances in strength from left to right. I start with the Split Squat, done on the floor as shown. (also known as a static lunge, as your feet stay in place) Shoulder width stance, step back with one foot. I want these to be done barefoot, especially if you normally wear thick soled riding shoes. Grip the floor with your front foot and make sure your weight is even between the heel and ball of foot. Engage your torso muscles and slowly pull yourself down, keeping your torso upright and your knee hovering in place. In this beginning version, it shouldn’t move forward over the toes much at all, and keep it centered over you mid foot. Do not let your knee buckle inwards, or let your hip kick out to the side. 3 sec lowering, then up in about 1 sec. Once you can do 10+ perfect reps at that speed per leg, you can move to the weighted version shown on the second page. For this one, everything is the same. Hold DBs or KBs in each hand. I want to see an athlete be able to do 6 reps per leg with 1/3rd of bodyweight in each hand, with a 3 second lowering per rep. These should be perfect form to count! Hat tip to @jfitzopex for this one long ago. Remember, you don’t get a good score on a test if you get most of the answers wrong, even if you tried really hard and it sucked to take the test! Think the same way here. For those not new to the strength game, this test may be easy – great! I do have progressions/standards beyond this, but that’s for later. Next post, we’ll look and single leg strength in a different and often neglected way! #bmxfitness #bikefitness #fitforflat #bmxtraining @rochelle_hagnas

A post shared by Scott Hagnas (@scotthagnas) on Aug 29, 2018 at 4:55pm PDT

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