Animal jump exercises using only one leg. Superb drills for developing lower body strength and control.
These animal jump movement drills are the new addition to our animal walk series. This time we're demonstrating numerous of movement drills done by using only one leg at the time.
Check our previous animal walk videos:
The single leg movement drills exercises demonstrated in the video or below are phenomenal for developing lower body explosiveness and control.
When you use only one leg to perform these movement drills, it requires a crazy amount of balance and unilateral strength. Moreover, they are incredibly fun to do and they can also be implemented into your personal flow.
One leg work combined with heavy squats are the best way to develop overall athleticism and lower body functionality. They are great for sports, fitness, martial arts and MMA.
You can also expect to add a considerable amount of size to your thighs, especially the quads and glutes. Although these may look brutal, they can really improve the health of your knees and hips.
You can do these single leg movement drills for 5 to 20 repetitions per set depending on the drill. 3 to 5 sets per exercise is fine. Take 1-2 minutes of rest between sets. If pure explosiveness is the goal, then longer rest periods can be utilized.
One Leg Animal Jump Exercises
Sparrow Jump
Sparrow jump is the hardest exercise illustrated here. Start cautiously - these are only for the advanced athletes.
In order to do the sparrow jump, you have to be extremely comfortable at performing high quality pistol squats, because you are basically jumping in the low pistol squat position.
The easiest version of the sparrow jump is to do it using a significant amount of momentum by allowing your butt touch the floor between repetitions. In this progression the abs work insanely hard.
After that becomes easy, you can try holding your feet while focusing on a controlled movement.
Shrimp Jump
Take a kneeling position and then jump using only one leg. Fully extend your hips after the jump.
This exercise will greatly develop plyometric strength in the lower body and really hit the glutes and hamstrings in addition to nicely working out your quads.
In the beginning you can use a bit of momentum in the initial position and assist with the kneeling leg. Eventually the goal would be to explode from the bottom with one leg without using any momentum.
Adv. Shrim Jump
Advanced shrimp jump is similar drill to the regular shrimp jump except here you are bringing your knee up to your chest.
The goal here is to maximize the explosiveness from the bottom. Swinging your arms in addition to bringing your knee up to your chest will definitely help with that.
Hawaiian Jump
Hawaiian jump is a single leg exercise where you are keeping your other leg on your knee.
Then you take small hops to move forward or backwards.
Your glutes and hamstrings are dynamically stretched when the assisting leg is on your knee.
Hawaiian jump is a great balance and coordination exercise.
Ice Skater
Ice skater is a sideways single leg jump drill which resembles a downhill skier or an ice skater.
The ice skater is a great lateral movement drill to prepare legs for intense lateral work which is why these are great for almost any athletic purpose.
A bit more complex variation of the ice skater is the "ballet jump" which is also a lateral jump except this time you cross your legs while jumping and land with the inside leg.
This makes the ballet jump a fine coordination and balance drill. The correct demonstration of the ballet jump can be seen from the video.
Train hard, stay safe.
