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This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, and
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favorite lower body resistance training exercises, the single leg deadlift
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touchdown. Now, the single leg deadlift touchdown is a great exercise for increasing glute
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max and glute medius strength, as well as intermuscular coordination. I'm going to
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have my friend Leanne come over and help me demonstrate this exercise. Now, the only
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difference in form between a deadlift and a single leg deadlift touchdown is
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the fact that you're on a single leg. I'm going to start Leanne, lining up her
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kinetic chain check points, feet parallel, her feet, knees, and hips are all in a
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straight line. I'm going to have her draw-in, squeeze her glutes, make sure she's not in and anterior
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pelvic tilt and squeeze her shoulder blades down and back, into a neutral position. To
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get her started on this exercise all I'm going to have her do is lift her foot an inch
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off the floor. She doesn't need to put her foot forward or foot back which is
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going to change the alignment of her kinetic chain, all we need to do is lift
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that foot slightly off the floor. Now, I'm going to have Leanne go ahead and reach down with
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the opposite hand of the leg that we're using. So the leg that's on the ground, the
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left leg, is the leg that's working, so we're going to go ahead and reach with the
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right hand. What that does, that opposite arm-leg reach, is force a
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little bit of an internal rotation of the pelvis so that we lower her
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gluteus medius, an external rotator of the hip, we inhibit her piriformis, and
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increase activity of this muscculature as she comes back. Now, a couple little form
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cues, as you'll see Leanne has a tendency to want to look at the mirror, we need to remind
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Leanne to keep her chin down. So go ahead and look at her foot as she goes down, and look up
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as she comes up. That'll keep her spine in nice, straight alignment. We're going to make
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sure she draws-in and she goes down, because we have a tendency to let that pooch out,
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and then she's coming back up I'm going to have her thrust her hips forward
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and squeeze her glutes. So that cue to thrust the hips forward to come back up will
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really increase gluteus maximus activity. Now, another form discrepancy you might
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see is the locked knee. I want to make sure that I keep that knee soft to
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increase the activity of our musculature that reinforces triple extension
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mechanics, so our calves or quads, that will increase glute max and glute medius
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activity as well. So go ahead and keep that soft, reach down,
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touch down. Keeping a locked knee is going to increase strength on her
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MCL, LCL and PCL, those ligaments in our knee, as well as increase activity
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of our deep longitudinal subsystem, being our biceps femoris, sacrotuberous ligament,
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and erector spinae, and those are all of the overactive synergists we've
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been trying to get calming down in her corrective exercise work. So once again I'm going to
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to keep this knee soft. Thrust forward. That will make sure that the glute max
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and glute med stay the primary movers and stabilizers of this exercise. Now, one
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other thing I've seen that I want to go ahead and voice an
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opinion on, is I have seen a lot of straight leg, or at least the opposite
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leg is straight, single leg touchdowns.
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Now, what this does is this is going to
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increase hamstring activity on this side. There have been some research studies
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that show if activity increases on one side it will increase on the other. We
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just talked about how we don't want to start increasing biceps femoris activity
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because it'll become synergistically dominant for our glute max. Do that position
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one more time. It also increases the tendency of her rolling this way, as you saw she fell. That
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roll outward, that hip hike, is going to increase piriformis and TFL activity,
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once again, overactive synergists I don't want to get involved. Last but
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not least, this type of deadlift touchdown allows her to compensate and
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doesn't require optimal extensibility of her SI joint. So just by doing our single leg
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touchdown with feet next to each other, and a bent knee, good form, we can pretty
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much ensure that glute max and glute medius stay our prime movers, which are muscles
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that we need to get more active, and of course, have a huge benefit to any sort
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of performance whether it's weightloss performance, hypertrophy training
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or sports performance by increasing glute max and glute med strength. Now, if I was
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going to progress this exercise for strength, all I have to do is add a dumb-
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bell to this exercise. I could have her hold a dumbbell
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in this hand, and just keep increasing the load over time, keeping it at a rep range
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for strength. If I wanted to increase her stability, it's very easy to start
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adding proprioceptively enriched environments to the foot that's on the ground. We
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could start with a mat here. We could then go to two mats, an Airex pad, a half
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foam roll, or a disc. Now, if you would like to add this in, and somebody
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isn't quite ready for a full single leg touchdown, maybe because of
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extensibility or stability reasons, I could have Leanne just do a single leg
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touchdown, but only reach down to her knee. Make sure she's sitting back and then thrusting forward
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on the way up. Once she can do 10 without too much touching down, or 15, whatever
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the rep range goal is, I could have a reach down to her shin. As I
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increase her extensibility, do work for her postural dysfunction, she increases
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strength and stability, I could then have her reach all the way down over time. So
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there you go, that's our single leg deadlift