Significantly weaker non-dominant leg jump strength

That's a very good question. I'm going to check it out.

Your “weak” let is probably not as muscularly weak as you think. What is more likely is that you have poorer inter muscular and intramuscular coordination, so in the former your body doesn’t sync up its movements in a way that maximizes force as seamlessly on one side as it does on the other, and in the latter the fibers are not firing in sequence to produce a greater peak force in your ‘off’ leg. Doing hopping exercises and such will improve that sort of thing in the general sense, but most humans will have asymmetries that you kind of just live with as a normal part of life.

right leg dominant also wrote:

That's a very good question. I'm going to check it out.

What did you find? Am waiting to know.

SSS wrote:

Your “weak” let is probably not as muscularly weak as you think. What is more likely is that you have poorer inter muscular and intramuscular coordination, so in the former your body doesn’t sync up its movements in a way that maximizes force as seamlessly on one side as it does on the other, and in the latter the fibers are not firing in sequence to produce a greater peak force in your ‘off’ leg. Doing hopping exercises and such will improve that sort of thing in the general sense, but most humans will have asymmetries that you kind of just live with as a normal part of life.

How does one improve that coordination beside single leg hold and squats? You are right that my left muscle strength itself is not too much weaker. I can do as many or slightly more single leg heel raises on left compared to right. I can do more single leg squats on the right than left but it’s not twice as many. I can hop barely a foot forward on the left but can hop at least two feet on the right.

hopless wrote:

right leg dominant also wrote:

That's a very good question. I'm going to check it out.

What did you find? Am waiting to know.

Haven't tried it yet. Still tired from yesterday's training.

But I have noticed that a lot of elite runners have the same thing. Their left leg is shorter than their right. And so, the left stide length is noticeably shorter.

Did a hop test today. 30 minutes running warm up then:

3x5 alternating right and left leg, so 3x5x2

Result: Each test on each leg resulted in further total ditance than the previous test.

Conclusion: that was fun and an unexpected result. Will try again in a few days.

right leg dominant also wrote:

Did a hop test today. 30 minutes running warm up then:

3x5 alternating right and left leg, so 3x5x2

Result: Each test on each leg resulted in further total ditance than the previous test.

Conclusion: that was fun and an unexpected result. Will try again in a few days.

Thanks, and interesting indeed. So, no noticeable difference between the legs along the progression?

hopless wrote:

right leg dominant also wrote:

Did a hop test today. 30 minutes running warm up then:

3x5 alternating right and left leg, so 3x5x2

Result: Each test on each leg resulted in further total ditance than the previous test.

Conclusion: that was fun and an unexpected result. Will try again in a few days.

Thanks, and interesting indeed. So, no noticeable difference between the legs along the progression?

Thank you for starting the thread. It made me wonder and want to experiment.

My conclusion was....inconclusive because each test on each leg seemed to serve as a warm up for the next test. So more tests are needed. Hopefully this will be good supplemental training.

I didn't find the hopping as awkward as I expected. I think running a few miles before the test helped.

Christian Taylor had knee issues with his dominant leg after winning the 2012 Olympics. He switched takeoff legs, jumped farther, and won the 2016 Olympics. With sufficient training, you can make your non dominant leg as powerful as your dominant leg.

OP update: more surprising asymmetry discovery, this time with squats. I realized that I can indeed do single leg half squats (butt descending until thigh horizontal) way better on my right than the left. It’s hard to measure how many more on the right because I can slowly keep doing many (25+) on either leg.

But surprisingly, while I can’t yet do pistol squats on either leg, I found that

1) I can barely balance myself stationary in the lowest pistol squat position on my left, but have no trouble balancing myself on my right. This is in part because I have less dorsiflexion on my left than right, but also because it’s weaker.

2) On my right, I can at least push my hands down on chairs as support to pull my pistol squat up, but on my left, it just feels like a completely lost cause even using arms. I’d probably need an overhead torso-height bar and use my freaking lats to pull my left pistol squat up.

So I got nothing, just fluff, in my left posterior chain. Unlike single leg jumps, my foot injury doesn’t hurt during squats, so it’s not even coming in the way as a confounding factor. Really got some work to do on my left.

I had an awesome workout today. I felt like I was flying.

The best I have felt for years. Those hops did something wonderful for my sustained power. I have been building gradually towards this for a long time, but those 30 hops are maybe something I should incorporate regularly?

My left foot is longer, but my left leg slightly shorter.

My left foot therefore reaches more when I run and pronates.

After years of studying this, I can see it instantly when I see other people walking. You can see this too when you watch many great track runners.

Good for you. Single leg plyo is indeed know to boost explosive power. The other day at the park, I saw a guy probably at least 50 years old do such long single leg stride workouts, at least 3-4 feet, that I got all jealous and that’s when I discovered how weak and asymmetric I was. :)

With just a little practice, I’m now able to do on my weaker leg:

(1) arm-on-chair assisted pistols;

(2) many reps of unassisted single leg deep squats but with the loose leg curled around the standing leg;

(3) lay on my back, lift my legs and butt up straight, bring them down quickly, and use the momentum to rise back up from the lowest pistol position unassisted.

The last one took quite a few tries, and feels like it’s training neurological triggers needed to fire the posterior chain to rise back up from the hole. Hopefully, it’s just a matter of more dedicated practice from here on.

Also, I’m able to do a pistol squat, just not quite elegantly, on my stronger leg after all!

hopless wrote:

How does one improve that coordination beside single leg hold and squats?

Choose your parents carefully.

It has possible also something to do with your running form. It seems to be that you use your muscles on the right side more as on the left side. Use it or lose it.

So even if you strengthen your left side (which you should in this case), the running form issue remains.

So there are 2 challenges .

lexel wrote:

It has possible also something to do with your running form. It seems to be that you use your muscles on the right side more as on the left side. Use it or lose it.

So even if you strengthen your left side (which you should in this case), the running form issue remains.

So there are 2 challenges .

Possible, and it’s hard to discern cause and effect (weakness => less use vs. other way round). I’d be afraid of forcing a form change that doesn’t feel natural, so am focusing on strengthening the left posterior chain for now.

right leg dominant also wrote:

Did a hop test today. 30 minutes running warm up then:

3x5 alternating right and left leg, so 3x5x2

Result: Each test on each leg resulted in further total ditance than the previous test.

Conclusion: that was fun and an unexpected result. Will try again in a few days.

Guess what, I was today also able to solidly reproduce this: increasing distances with increasing reps. My left leg injury seems to have healed a fair bit, so the asymmetry is less stark now as well.

I found that I could cover ~20 feet in 4 hops on my first right leg try and ~18.5’ on my left, but by the third or fourth attempt, I could cover ~20’ on my left and ~21.5’ on my right.

I also found that I’m just a smoother shock-absorbing (more like a cat) lander on my right with hardly any knee stress, but land harder and less elegantly on my left with more knee stress, so I probably need to do plyo to smoothify my left chain.