The merits of an athlete are often anchored by the lower body (Except with those intense guys in that movie ‘Murderball’). It is the foundation for every athlete. It’s the ideal location of the musculoskeletal system to generate power.

Commentators, coaches, critics, spectators, often refer to an athlete having ‘no legs,’ whenever they notice a drop-off in performance. And while that group of observationists can be a bit pigheaded sometimes, this figurative representation is usually an accurate one.

Athletes benefit from stronger legs in many different ways. From an endurance perspective to compete in longer durations for their sport, and also gaining key athletic attributes such as explosion, speed, balance, and strength. The athlete who is a higher jumper, faster runner, and maintains steady balance, is the athlete with stronger legs. The athlete who relies on the lower body to achieve athletic tasks, rather than the upper body, is the athlete who is less likely to get injured.

Whether the athlete is already sufficient or not in the lower body, strength training is an essential supplementation that can add to an already strong lower body base, or develop the existence of a much needed one to thrive in athletics.

Of course there are many ways to improve this athletic foundation. From something as simple as running, no matter what the intensity, or the method of strength training which was briefly mentioned previously.

Unlike running, strength training puts a unique demand on the body that may activate and challenge new muscles for the athlete. Sarah spoke a lot about the glutes being neglected by athletes, and introduced the proper usage of exercises such as the RDL, Single-Leg RDL, Split Squats, and Step-Ups to strengthen that region. Athletes can certainly get by with superb quadricep strength, but if the glutes remain dormant they will not tap into their full athletic potential, and make themselves vulnerable to injury by having a muscle imbalance distributed throughout their legs.

The Single-Leg RDL is a very effective glute strengthener. First of all, single-leg work for an athlete is very important because most of the activity in their sport will be on one leg. The balance, strength development, and coordination that single-leg work offers is invaluable. The misconception about the RDL is that it is a hamstring exercise. But when the athlete bends their standing knee, initiates the movement through the hips, keeps the weight of the body towards the mid-foot, and maintains a forward lean with the torso, then that glute will undergo a feeling that has never been felt before, and the athlete will feel like they have been missing out on a whole group of muscles this whole time while they were venturing for ways to get stronger.