Single Leg Deadlift
Single Leg Deadlift
Physio Lewis Craig shares an informative video on how to correctly complete a single leg deadlift. This strength exercise is great for recovering hamstring injuries and athletes wanting to strengthen their hamstrings.
Transcript
Hi guys, Lewis here with our exercise of the day. Today it is the single leg deadlift. Great exercise to work on your hamstring strength so if you have a hamstring tear that is recovering or hamstring tendinopathy. Great for that single leg strength for runners, footballers or netballers. So what you are going to do is you are going to stand, kick your leg back, slight bend of the knee. Then we are bending from your hips, from your waist and keeping a neutral back position. Nice and slowly controlled and then pushing up through you heal. If you were looking side on – same, kick your leg back, bend your knee then lifting from your hips and pushing up through your heals. Have fun with it guys.
Lewis Craig (APAM)
POGO Physiotherapist
Masters of Physiotherapy
Featured in the Top 50 Physical Therapy Blog
Thanks Lewis for the single leg deadlift demo. I have a question. If one of my legs is a lot weaker than the other with this strength move what modification should I be making to bring it along quicker to even them both up. I am an ultra runner/triathlete who has itb flare ups on occasion. But more recently on the hip that is weakest I have been suffering with tfl pain. I am trying to bring both legs into sync for maintaining my hip stability whilst running but struggling to do so.
Thanks so much, Katie
Thanks for your question Katie.
Firstly when doing the exercise I’d try keep the weight the same for both legs, so if you can only manage 5Kg for say 3 sets of 8 on your weaker side but you can do 15 Kg on the other just stick with the lighter weight, so the other doesn’t get stronger, but stays constant. this goes for your other single leg exercises for your glutes as well. If you find control during the exercise is an issue there are plenty of single leg balance/bosu type exercises you can do to help with ankle stability if its playing a role. It sounds like your hip stability/glute strength is also troublesome so if you are getting TFL pain I’d be continuing glute strength but checking that you are biasing your glutes rather than your TFL (this might mean playing around with your hip position, such as turning it in on crab walks or side-lying leg raises.
Hope this helps, Lewis
Thanks Lewis for sharing your knowledge. My left leg is weaker than the right due to an injury many years ago. If the maximum lift left leg can do lets say 10 kg what weight I should use for 3 sets of 8 for both legs for single leg dead lift?
Thanks to POGO for sharing so much of your knowledge. You are walking the talk for ” Knowledge is rare commodity you can share it but still keep it” Kari
Hi Kari, thanks for your question, apologies for the slow reply. If your 1 RM (repetition maximum or maximum you can lift for 1 rep) is 10Kg; your 8RM (or 8 rep training load) should be 80% of this weight, so 8Kg for this example. If you image search ‘Calculating RM’ you should find a hand table commonly used for different rep ranges.
Lewis