Left Leg vs Right Leg Strength Differences In Jumping
Talking about stiffness today. Talking about joint stiffness being elastic, increasing stiffness. Isaiah knows all about that. And I'm gonna I'm just gonna pose a question to Isaiah because he hasn't seen this yet, and we're going to see what his response is regarding this specific concept. I want you to watch this a few times, Isaiah.
John:I want you to tell me if you notice anything, if you see anything, and what you what you think of the question, the prompt, if you will. Is there anything
Isaiah:For the listeners, this is a video here of John Bounding. It says, which leg, right or left, is stronger in the weight room? Which leg do you think has better stiffness in plyos and why? If you hit the nail on the head, I'll feature you on the podcast.
John:Dylan McCarthy says third leg is stronger. The
Isaiah:third leg? That's what it It question. Was a
John:The third leg is trick question. But what what leg do you think is which leg in the weight room is stronger? My right leg or my left leg? What are you looking at here when you're analyzing this?
Isaiah:Well, you kind of gave it away early before the podcast.
John:I think I
Isaiah:heard you it.
John:I think I heard you say it. I might
Isaiah:have. The
Isaiah:right leg is the strong one, but the left leg is the stiffer one because the left leg is undergoing such short ground contact times that has to be stiff. The right leg on your one foot mean? What do
John:left leg is undergoing short ground contact times.
Isaiah:Left leg is your plant leg.
John:Like during during what?
Isaiah:During a one foot jump. During your approach, the right leg and then you always say your right knee gives you issues and I think I think is your left knee.
John:My left knee is the problem knee for sure. 100%.
Isaiah:Oh, I could
John:have sworn you tendon
Isaiah:pain in the
John:But watch look. Here's what we're gonna look here, and there's a few good answers here, but go ahead. I wanna hear your
Isaiah:I I think the reason your right leg is stronger is because that's the leg that's lowering you, and it's going into 90 degrees of flexion and then pushing hard as hell into the, like, out. Like, it's projecting you out. And then your left leg is just basically holding position. It's holding the line.
John:Yeah. So that my my body can maintain stiffness. So I do agree with a lot of what you said. I'm actually gonna go through these comments because there's a lot of really good feedback. If you guys are listening to this or you're someone that has commented on this video or you don't, maybe you should go comment on the video and tell me what you think if you haven't, already.
John:But we're gonna we're just gonna go through this. We're gonna ignore Dylan's comment. And Andy says left leg more elastic, right leg stronger in the weight room. That is true. And let's see what else.
John:Ben didn't add any any value there. Ben Moxness. He said it sounds like Jurassic Park. So we have I would speculate that your left leg is stronger in the weight room, and this is based visually off the level of deformation during ground contact. Your left leg maintains greater stiffness at the knee joint while your right leg appears to flex and spend more time on the ground.
John:And how about that podcast? You are getting featured, by the way. I really like this guy. His last name is Moses Power and Prowess. Really, really smart guy doing a lot of cool stuff in jump training, but my right leg is definitely deforming more.
John:And the reason for this, I believe, is because it lacks stiffness. I think that the muscular tendon unit is not, even though it is stronger, I don't have the capability in a stress shortening cycle to generate that stiffness very, very quickly through that quasi isometric effect that we see bounding specifically. You're going to definitely see it in other things, but it's almost certainly the case that when you're bounding, you're having the tendon stretch and store a ton of energy. So when you're looking at the right tendon specifically or the right patella tendon, if you're watching the video on the third contact so you'll see here, that's the first contact. I actually do a decent job handling that one.
John:And then the left leg, I get a really, really strong bound off of. And then right here, as I hit the ground, I flex way down and push out of it. And that's because I'm strong enough to handle that position, but the tendon is not really stiff. So I'm getting this really long compliant, basically, like a slinky type takeoff. My tendon is not stiff enough in that position.
John:That is my honest lens of this, but there are some other good piece of feedback that I also agree with. So he said looks like your right leg is stronger. That's what, Hiram Vexer said. Right is stronger in the weight room. True.
John:This is a good one from Gasper Epro. So he's a high jump coach out of Estonia. He is obsessed with jumping just like me. He's coached a handful of world class high jumpers. He said depends.
John:Hard to tell. The entry to ground contact is not the same. The right grabs further, hence amortizes more. I think what he means there is I'm either kicking out a bit more or that as I'm rolling through that contact, you're seeing a longer amortization, which he he is right. I am amortizing a lot during that.
John:And then he said in equal conditions, they would be far less from each other. Left slightly stiffer probably. And then Janik said this depends on the movement. Step ups and leg presses right is stronger, but anything quad or calf dominant left will be stronger. So my calf on the left leg is definitely way stronger, but I definitely am far stronger on my right quad than my left quad.
John:And I actually think that that happens because I get so many contacts on the left leg, and I've noticed this by switching between the two. Like, for example, there was a period of time I jumped only on my left leg and there was a period of time I jumped only on my right leg and when I jump all the time off my right leg and Isaiah, you can tell me if you corroborate this because you've done both. That leg, the whatever leg I jump off more is the one that feels weaker in the weight room. I don't care if it's, you know, if it's, dunking or high jumping, whatever it is, the leg that I do more jumps off of off one foot is the one that will feel weaker in the weight room. And that will last anywhere from, like, pretty much from doing normal weekly sessions.
John:That's what I noticed. Yeah. Have you noticed that or no in your case?
Isaiah:My my right leg has always been stronger than my leg.
John:When you've been jumping off of it more? I don't know. Because think about this. You're a left right jumper. Right?
John:Yeah. So if that's the leg that's under more flexion, you're using it more in the jump sessions. It's gonna be massively fatigued on your weight room days. Or, like, you would assume that leg would be stronger, wouldn't you? Because it's your Yeah.
John:It's your plant leg. It's in deeper flexion. Right? I've always been confused
Isaiah:by it. I I honestly think a huge reason is because.
John:Of the knee pain.
Isaiah:Let let left knee and like that left leg just in general has gone through so many injuries that single leg work exposes it. Like, I like I I just guard it so much.
John:If you wanna build elite stiffness, you should probably click the link in the description and we'll help you be the stiffest, most elastic, bounciest athlete exhibited here by me, the worst athlete on the training.
Isaiah:I actually have a I have a theory. Because even if you look at my quads, like, when I
Isaiah:flex them next to each other, my right one is visibly bigger. Really? I think you
John:shift towards that, though, during lifting. I can't see. Oh. Oh. We're getting a free show here.
John:Isaiah's flexing the quads. Dang, dude. That's actually crazy. You're so lean right now. Damn.
John:I'm on a weight loss journey.
Isaiah:You can even tell the difference.
John:You I can't tell the difference from this angle. Let me see. Okay. That's your right one? Right.
John:That's my right one. Yep. I think they're just shaped differently. That's what it looks like to me. That one's supposed to be bigger.
John:I have a confirmation bias here. I can't tell.
Isaiah:I can't
John:even said it's bigger, so I think it's bigger. Like
Isaiah:I can't even
Isaiah:when I wrap my
John:Let's get the tape measure out. We gotta get the tape measure out. Are you Yeah. We need to do it. Right?
Isaiah:I can't
Isaiah:I can't tell. But, what you were saying, I think that
John:might be why. I think I shift towards that right leg when I squat. I've noticed it. I've definitely noticed it. Yeah.
John:Unilateral work, you can really see those weaknesses
Isaiah:Mhmm.
John:Become apparent. But I have a few theories, and we we went through some of these, and I do agree with some of the statements there that were said. One is that jumping more off that leg as a one foot jumper is gonna fatigue that leg. It's gonna fatigue that knee. It's gonna fatigue that hip.
John:Well, specifically the knee. I think it's really gonna fatigue the quad. That's one big reason why. I think the second is maybe tendon pain. A lot of guys that jump off one, they have tendon pain in that leg eventually, and so they stop pushing as hard on the strength work.
John:I think that's two. I think that's the third is the penultimate step. I think the penultimate step being in that low rolling position over and over and over again makes that leg really, really strong. However, if that were the case, then when I go jump off my right leg, my my right leg would still be strong. Right?
John:Because it's had ten plus years of jumping off of my left leg in it going through that same motor pattern over and over again. And that's not the case. If I jump off my right leg a bunch and do the exact same amount of strength work, my left leg will be stronger. And I've consistently seen that. When I was at Duke, I was high.
John:I was speed jumping all the time on my right leg, like, exclusively. And my left leg was way better. And I remember thinking, like, wait a minute. My right leg has always been the stronger leg. Why all of a sudden is the left leg better?
John:Like, just randomly. And it was after doing, you know, months of trying to learn how to speed jump off that right leg right before COVID. And that was the first time I noticed it, and I was like, I don't think it's necessarily an adaptation as much as it is that jumping off of one leg is massively fatiguing. And the reason it feels weaker or stronger is because of balance. It's not necessarily the actual output of the leg.
John:Like, I think on a you know, if I put them on a force plate, the peak forces would be probably pretty similar, but the RFDs might be slightly different. But I think what you would see is that my balance is way worse on whatever leg I'm jumping off more because that's the first thing to fatigue. When you're really fatigued, like your central nervous system, balance is one of the first things that goes because it's a really sensitive metric. Right? Like and it's not necessarily something that's gonna determine your performance per se, but it's related to metrics that will determine your performance.
John:So if you're standing on one leg, and I've heard of track coaches doing this at times, and they you know, you're like, oh, my balance is, like, a little bit off or whatever. That's that's one of the ways they can tell if maybe not systemically. It's more like peripherally at the actual joint, you know, at that actual limb, you're experiencing some level of fatigue, whether it's neural or muscular or whatever else. And I've noticed that as well. I think that on a force plate, though, if you were to just say push as hard as you can and you were to measure the forces, I actually I'm not I've tested this before, and I think I think the peak forces were relatively similar, but the shape of the curve was different.
John:I have to go back and look at my force dex data. So, yeah, that would be my lens and my experience of it. Do you have any other thoughts you wanna include there, Isaiah? Do you think getting my left leg stronger and feeling stronger would make me a better jumper compared to my right if I just only did my left leg?
Isaiah:Not only. My anecdotal experience is that the stronger I have felt on unilateral work, the higher I jump, but that's purely I don't think it's a result of the unilateral work. It's being healthy enough to handle unilateral work. Like, it wasn't that there was something special about doing a lunge that that's like the best jumping exercise. It's more like
John:I'm talking specifically one foot too. Talking specifically one foot.
Isaiah:Yeah. I mean, one foot specifically, I've always felt like one one legged stuff transfers well. Like, if I do if I'm doing lunges and stuff like that, but I also jump like freaking stomping through the ground.
John:The least effective strategy with just the highest force as possible. My favorite was when we went to Sacramento at the Kings, and I saw you jump off one foot after the event. And, dude, you looked like your legs were so big at the time, and it just looked like a horse trying to jump off one leg. Like, imagine a horse, like, trying to jump off one leg with one of its rear legs. Like, it's got those big old hind legs, that big old horse hips.
John:That's what Isaiah looked like when he was trying to jump, and it just was it it looked like a T Rex. That that's actually how I would best describe it. His leg was so big. And, yeah, now I think after that, you've had better one foot sessions after doing it more and getting more explosive. You've just always gotten better from getting output beast, just being an output monster, I feel like.
John:But it would be fun to see you do a one foot arc, especially during your high jump era that you're in right now. You're I I I'm scarred from one foot. Your meniscus? No. The knee.
John:Your ACL?
Isaiah:No. Tendon.
John:Oh, wow. Yeah. It's tough. But you can drop off both. That's the podcast, guys.
John:We'll see you tomorrow. Click the link in the description. Bye.
