Running Is A Single Leg Exercise.

So why are you not doing unilateral strength training for running?

How Running Is a Single-Leg Exercise

Running is a unilateral exercise, meaning that you use one leg at a time to run.

While you run, you never have both feet on the ground at the same time. To most effectively train to improve at running, you need to include training that will translate into running.

As the saying goes, if you want to “train as you play and play as you train”, you should incorporate unilateral exercises into your strength training.

How Training One Leg At A Time Improves Running

1. Improves Strength and Stability

Incorporating unilateral exercises into your strength training will strengthen your quads, hamstrings, glutes, calves, soleus, and other muscles that support your feet, ankles, knees, and hips which will improve your running ability.

Strength training has been shown to improve running performance in terms of speed, stride power (how much force you generate per step), and distance traveled. Working one leg at a time also forces you to improve your stability so you don't fall over.

This translates to your running performance as you must stabilize your body and maintain efficient posture with each step while running.

Proper stability allows you to use your maximum muscle output, similar to how a tree can withstand intense winds because it is stable to the ground.

2. Increases Efficiency

Unilateral exercise improves your running efficiency and economy.

Since unilateral exercises improve your strength and stability in each leg and your overall body, your ability to propel yourself forward with each step while running becomes easier. This is beneficial because as each step gets easier to perform, you can go faster and farther.

Additionally, unilateral exercises require coordination of your whole body and mind to stabilize and perform each repetition. This carries over into improving your running efficiency as it enhances your proprioception (mind-muscle connection).

3. Identifies Imbalances

Another benefit of unilateral exercises is that it identifies muscle and stability imbalances.

Often runners have a leg that is stronger than the other.

This is important to identify because a weaker leg can lead to negative alterations in your running form, which could further the inequality in strength and eventually lead to injury. For example, if you are able to perform 10 lunges with your right leg out front but only 8 repetitions with your left leg out front, then that shows you that your left leg is weaker than your right leg.

You can correct this imbalance by performing additional lunges with the left leg out front to strengthen it more.

That’s the beauty of unilateral exercises - they identify imbalances and can correct them.

4. Reduces chance of injury

As you identify muscle and stability imbalances, you will mitigate the chance of injury that is often caused by a weakness in a muscle, tendon, or ligament.

Additionally, an injury could arise for the use of incorrect technique which could also come from a muscle or stability imbalance in one leg. Unilateral exercises reduce the chance of injury as they identify imbalances and strength each leg one at a time.

Try These Unilateral, Leg Exercises In Your Strength Training:

• Lunges

• Single-leg RDLs

• Cossack squats

• ATG split squats

• Bulgarian split squats

• Single-leg glute bridges

• Single-leg leg extensions

• Single-leg hamstring curls

• Single-leg reverse step ups

• Single leg jumps (in all directions)

• Single-leg calf raises (legs straight and bent)

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