The majority of sport movements are unilateral. What this means is isolating a limb from it’s opposite in a strength movement. This differs from our typical bilateral exercises where both limbs are in the game.
Here’s an example, a bilateral exercise would be a barbell bench press, because both my arms are on the bar. But, we can turn that same motion into a unilateral exercise with a single-arm dumbbell bench press using one side of the body at at a time.
Because most sport movements are unilateral, it only makes sense that we should incorporate unilateral movement patterns into our training in the weightroom.
So we’re going to list out three unilateral exercises to use to build crazy athleticism.
Rear-Foot-Elevated Split Squat
The great thing about the RFE Split Squat is that we’re able to load it pretty heavy with a barbell on our back.
The RFE split squat will teach our bodies to keep our trunk controlled through a dynamic range of motion, while being able to coordinate through our quads, our hamstrings and our glutes, some of the biggest muscle groups in the body responsible for creating power on the field.
I like to treat the RFE split squat as a max strength lift where we’re working as low as the 3 rep range. We can also use it as a higher-volume accessory exercise with a kettlebell or dumbbells.
Single-Arm Dumbbell Row
So we’re taking the traditional barbell row or two arm dumbbell row and isolating one side at a time. The benefit that this has is it’ll teach the body to coordinate through one side of the upper body at a time while training dynamic anti-rotation of the core.
Just like the RFE split squat, we can load the single-arm row either as a high-volume accessory exercise or getting as low as 2-3 reps.
This is the great thing about compound exercises is that even when they’re done unilaterally, we can still load them fairly heavy to hit big strength gains, while simultaneously becoming a more coordinated athlete.
Cossack Squat
Here we’re working in the frontal plane. We’re going to be working on coordinating through the glutes and the quads simultaneously.
What this will transfer to on the field, especially for field athletes, is things like improvements in cutting mechanics for better change of direction movements.
You can add an even more dynamic variation to this movement by using a drop Cossack squat. In this way we’re working to coordinate the same group of muscles, but learning to do it in a fast manner as soon as our foot hits the ground.
If you'd like to watch our full-length video on unilateral training, CLICK HERE.
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