The Anterior Chain

[Adam1]

@rj24

No. Just, no. Almost everything in this post is wrong.

For one, an SLJ is a standing long jump, which is a general test of leg and hip power and is most certainly bilateral. Since it’s bilateral, it’s definitely not specific to doing unilateral lifts. At this point I should probably ignore you, but I’ll press on.

Two, I’ve been training the squat far longer than I’ve trained unilateral movements, but my lower back has always held me back. Same for the DL. It’s not due to motivation, it’s due to the nature of the movement. You can’t argue with it, the squat puts a higher emphasis on the spinal extensors and unilateral lifts put more emphasis on the legs.

Three, the whole point I’ve been trying to make is that it’s all about leg power. And all of the examples of pros and cons I gave were completely solid. I don’t know how you could say otherwise.

I said that unilateral loading allows more of a load on the working leg, puts less load on the trunk, engages the hip rotators, abductors, and adductors, and uses less overall muscle mass so CNS drain isn’t as high. There is nothing wrong with any of those statements.

And the specificity of unilateral lifts is not found in balance and I never claimed it was. The specificity is found in the ability to load the muscles of each leg more heavily than one is capable of doing in a bilateral lift. The other benefit is increased hip muscle activation. I never said anything about balance.

Please, just read what I’ve written and I wouldn’t need to keep rehashing this. I’ve laid out my case and I’ve done it quite well. All the problems at this point are due to a lack of careful reading and an abundance of misunderstanding.

Excuse me, I figured you meant single leg jump. Most people refer to a standing long jump as a broad jump.

Secondly, you are making assumptions that everyone is like you and that your experience is the same as others. Remember, when n=1, your assumption holds little credibility. The lumbar is not the limiting factor in a squat for everyone else.

If specificity of unilateral is not based on enhanced stability needs, then your other argument of increased activation are, at best, debatable. The amount of CNS drain is inherently applicable only to everything else done in training and to say that less CNS drain is better is just not a valid reason to do one exercise versus another. If there is increased ad & abductor activation involved in single leg movements, those improvements in intensity of activation (amplitude) can, and probably are, easily off set by a much lower loading ability. This was my contention in my last post which you ignored. If this is not the case, I would gladly prefer to be enlightened by a study that shows a comparison and results rather than just you saying “Wrong.” Which is hardly an intelligent way to discuss things. I know you have been having a rather heated argument here with tamfb, but please do not think everyone here is looking to have a childish war of words.