reckonerSingle-leg balance hold
Stand on one foot and hold still. Your ankle and hip make small corrections the whole time to keep you upright, and that work is the exercise. Start next to a wall, and make it harder once standing still is easy.
Stand tall on one foot, eyes ahead.
- Pattern
- Calf
- Trains
- Calves, abductors
- Kit
- Bodyweight
- Loading
- Your own bodyweight
- Reckoner prescribes
- 3 holds of 30 to 60 seconds
- Progression step
- 10 seconds on the hold
- Skill
- Simple to learn
- Recovery cost
- Very low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Ankle
Muscles worked
How to do it
Stand next to a wall
Stand side on to a wall or a rack, close enough to touch it if you wobble, so a lost balance costs you a touch rather than a step.
Lift one foot
Shift your weight onto one foot and lift the other a few inches off the floor.
Stand tall, knee soft
Keep your standing knee slightly bent, not locked, your hips level and your eyes on a point ahead. A soft knee gives the ankle and hip room to make their small corrections.
Hold, then switch
Hold for the time set, touching the wall only if you need to. Then do the other foot.
What goes wrong
Locking the knee
A locked knee feels solid. It stiffens the leg and leaves less to correct with. Keep it soft.
Dropping the hip
Sagging into the standing hip feels like resting. The hip on the lifted side drops and the side of the hip stops working. Keep both hips level.
Looking down
Watching your feet feels like it helps. It makes balancing harder. Look ahead.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3 x 30 s | Longer hold 30 → 40 sYou held every set with a hard effort and steady form (RPE 7), so the hold gains ten seconds. A hold with nothing in the hands climbs on time, because time is the only axis it has. |
| 2 | 3 x 40 s | Longer hold 40 → 50 sYou held every set with a hard effort and steady form (RPE 7), so the hold gains ten seconds. A hold with nothing in the hands climbs on time, because time is the only axis it has. |
| 3 | 3 x 50 s | Longer hold 50 → 60 sYou held every set with a hard effort and steady form (RPE 7), so the hold gains ten seconds. A hold with nothing in the hands climbs on time, because time is the only axis it has. |
| 4 | 3 x 60 s | Holding steady 60 sYou held every set with a hard effort and steady form (RPE 7), and 60 seconds is the longest this hold goes. There is nothing to put in your hands to make it harder, so this one has run out of room. It stays where it is. If you want to keep pushing here, swap it for a harder movement when the block ends. |
| 5 | 3 x 60 s | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 60 s | Holding steady 60 sYou held every set with a hard effort and steady form (RPE 7), and 60 seconds is the longest this hold goes. There is nothing to put in your hands to make it harder, so this one has run out of room. It stays where it is. If you want to keep pushing here, swap it for a harder movement when the block ends. The lighter week is over, so this is back to three sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
How do I make it harder?
Hold longer, stand on a softer surface, move your arms or your raised leg slowly, or close your eyes for short spells next to the wall.
What does it train?
The calves and the muscles at the side of the hip, which keep you upright on one leg. Reckoner counts it for those.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
Not by itself. It is a balance exercise you choose, so the engine never chooses it for you. Choose it in the lift picker. It is timed, left then right. Ankle is recorded against it.
Similar movements
Reckoner has no other movement in this swap group.