reckonerSingle-leg leg press
The leg press one leg at a time. One foot in the middle of the platform, the other off it, and the same rule as the two leg version: lower until right before your hips lift off the pad. It shows you quickly if one leg is doing more of the work.
One foot mid platform, hips stay down.
- Pattern
- Squat
- Trains
- Quads, glutes
- Kit
- Machine leg press
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 5 to 8 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 5 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Some technique
- Recovery cost
- Low
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Knee, hip
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the seat
Set the seat so that with one foot on the platform your knee starts comfortably bent and your lower back is flat on the pad. Starting too folded means the rep begins where it should end.
One foot mid platform
Place one foot in the middle of the platform, toes slightly out. Rest the other foot on the floor or the frame, so it cannot help.
Lower until right before the hips lift
Bend the knee and lower under control. Stop before your hips start to curl off the pad, because past that point the range comes from your pelvis, not your leg.
Press, then switch legs
Press through the whole foot until the knee is nearly straight. Finish every rep on one leg, then do the other, so both legs get the same set.
What goes wrong
Letting the knee cave in
A caving knee often lets a hard rep finish, so it feels like grinding it out. Keep the knee tracking over your toes, and lighten the load if it will not.
Chasing depth past the hips
The sled travels further, so it feels like more range. As on the two leg press, the extra range from a lifting pelvis is not leg range. Stop where your back stays flat.
Guessing the load from your two leg press
Halving your usual weight feels like a sensible place to start. One leg often handles more than half of what two do, though by how much varies a lot between people1, and balance on one leg is new. Start conservatively and let the first sessions find the right load.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 40 kg, 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 | 4 x 5 at 40 kg | More reps 5 → 6 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 4 x 6 at 40 kg | More reps 6 → 7 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 4 x 7 at 40 kg | More reps 7 → 8 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 4 x 8 at 40 kg | Load up 40 kg → 45 kgYou hit the top of the range with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7), so the weight on the machine goes up 5 kg to 45 kg. The weight went up, so the reps come down to five. You are now working 5 to 8. |
| 5 | 4 x 5 at 45 kg | 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 5 at 45 kg | More reps 5 → 6 repsYou finished every set with three reps left in the tank (RPE 7) and room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. The lighter week is over, so this is back to four 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
Why train one leg at a time?
Each leg has to do its own work, so a stronger side cannot cover for a weaker one. It takes twice as long as the two leg press for the same sets.
How should I log it?
Each set is the left leg and then the right, logged as one set. The weight is the plates you add.
Will Reckoner put this in my plan?
Not by itself. It doubles the time for the same work, so the engine never chooses it for you. Choose it in the lift picker or as a swap for the leg press. Knee and hip are recorded against it.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Škarabot and colleagues, European Journal of Applied Physiology, 2016. Bilateral deficit in maximal force production a review of the bilateral deficit, the smaller force each limb produces in a two limb effort than alone, finding it common but inconsistent and highly variable in size. Over five years old, and still the review of it