The Single Legged Deadlift

Let’s have a look at the Single Legged Deadlift. It can tell you a lot about your hips and knees, especially if they bother you.

First of all, so we know what we are talking about, this is a Single Legged Deadlift(unloaded).

Why train the single legged versus your standard, bilateral Deadlift? One reason that I use it is to seperate the hips. Deadlifting is a hip dominant exercise, using the glutes and hamstrings as the prime movers. It’s an excellent way to build stability in the lumbo pelvic (hip and low back) region. But what if your two hips are not the same? Chances are, your body will compensate for this flaw in your standard bilateral deadlift. As a result, you will not be able to work out possible side to side imbalances as effectively as you would if you trained each hip seperately. In the following video you you will see the right side of my single legged deadlift. You can see that it is not the same as the above video – when I stand on my left leg I have a much easier time than on the right.

That’s a compelling reason for me to use the movement. In a regular deadlift I don’t notice the problem, but on one leg it shows up.

Now, to come to the heart of what I would like to say, your hips have a big job to do. They stabilize your pelvis and lower back, which is carrying around the heavy (hopefully not too heavy) load of your upper body. They also stabilize the knee via the femur, the long bone of your leg which forms the top half of your knee joint. If your hips are not strong then those sensitive areas that we so often experience pain, namely the knees, low back, and of course hips themselves take a lot of punishment. If you look at the above video again and concentrate on my knee you will see that I am having trouble keeping it from traveling in towards the midline of my body.

When you watch the real time video it is there but you mostly notice that I am off-balance. If you watch in slow motion you can see just how far my knee jumps in towards the center. The implications of that level of instability are significant! (Note: The video is not the same one as above, but it was taken only 5 minutes before to provide a close-up)

How this might adversely affect the knee is pretty obvious, but this is also bad news for the hip. Remember that the top of the knee joint is the end of the femur, which is the long bone of your thigh. The other end of the femur is the hip joint and if the knee is moving in a direction we don’t want, then so is the hip. The result is translation of the head of the femur in the joint. I in fact have some hip pain on that side, which is likely caused by a labral tear. When we consider how poorly I am able to stabilize on that side is it a wonder that as I work on getting stronger on that side, my hip pain is diminishing?

At the end of the day, an unloaded, Single Legged Deadlift as shown in these videos is little more than standing on one leg. We should ask ourselves, especially if we are having any knee, hip, or ankle pain if it is acceptable to not even have the strength and stability to stand on one leg. Many chronic pains from the shoulders, to the low back, to the knees are the result of simple weakness, imbalance, and instability in the body. As the slow motion revealed, while it might not appear to be a big deal in real time, there are actually some significant things happening when the body isn’t functioning optimally. When I work out my focus is to find what my body does not do well and work on it. You should do the same. Have yourself evaluated with an FMS. You might be surprised what you find!