Single Leg Squat to Bilateral Cable Pull Down

Single leg squat to bilateral cable pull down is a dynamic exercise that targets multiple muscles in your lower body and upper body. It starts with a single leg squat on one side moving down into a full squat while facing the cable machine. From here, you will then explosively stand up while performing a bilateral cable pull down exercise with both hands at once. This exercise requires a great deal of stability and control, making it a great way to challenge your body and build strength.

Transcript

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This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, bringing you guys the progression
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single leg squat to bilateral cable pull down. I think you guys going to find
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that there's an advantage
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to putting those two exercises together. You get a little assistance
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from the bilateral cable pull down to assist in a very
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difficult single leg squat, but this is still a very
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advanced exercise- a progression of our posterior oblique sub-system
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integration
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that requires an immense amount of stability and control.
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Now, you are going to need a pretty special piece of equipment: these
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two armed cable columns with the nice high
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cables are kind of mandatory. Although you might be able to pull off
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shorter individuals using a standard cable column that are only about six feet high,
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as your athletes or patients get a little taller, you need something with some nice
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high cables.
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I'm going to have my friend, Melissa, come out and she's going to help me demonstrate this
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exercise.
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Alright, are you ready?
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She's going to grab both of these handles. She's going to back up a little bit so that
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the weight is already lifted off the stack. I want her to sit and
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she's going to lift one leg about one inch off the floor. I don't want her to pistol
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squat with the leg out, that
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allows us to use some false stability through the hamstring.
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I want- if I was looking from the side, it would look exactly like a squat.
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You ready?
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Squeeze through your glute, stabilize, lean back,
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and now pull down. That's the hard part, guys, is to get
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all the way- "keep going, why did you stop?"
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The hard part is to go down, come back up,
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get stable with a nice straight line through torso and leg,
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and then pull down so we get that lat recruitment. We're getting nice
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posterior oblique sub-system integration from this lat
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through the thoraco-lumbar fascia into this glute. She is getting a little
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assistance from these cables on that single leg squat. I don't know how many of you
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guys have actually tried to do a true single leg squat with both legs together,
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but it is not easy. Of course, after she does 12 on this side, I'm just going to have
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her switch sides.
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Now, a little special thing about this exercise is you do have to experiment with
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the weight.
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You end up doing twice as many reps with the upper body as the lower body,
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which means the weight for your upper body
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can't be so challenging that your arms burnout at let's say 12, because you'd still
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have a lot to go for legs.
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On the other hand, it can't be so light that it's not giving you
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any help on that single leg squat, because you'll find it's
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very challenging to maintain optimal form
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if you're getting no assistance at all. You're going to have to experiment with weight,
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up and down. If your goal is maybe more leg strength overall, you could start
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decreasing the weight. If your goal is more arm strength, maybe start increasing the
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weight.
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So there you guys have it: single leg squat
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to bilateral cable pull down.
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You could do a couple things to progress this exercise other than just shifting
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the weight.
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We could start to bring these handles down,
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forcing her to step further back which means then she'd also get less
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assistance coming back
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up. It would start to look more and more like a single leg squat to row
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to bilateral- or no it'd just be single leg
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to bilateral row. Not easy.
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So, I look forward to seeing one of you guys try to pull that off.
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Maybe send me a video back. I hope you guys have some fun trying to find a
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cable column to pull this off on.
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It's definitely a challenging exercise. I look forward to hearing about