Single-leg Romanian deadlift

What it is

Stand on one leg, knee softly bent. Hinge at the hip as in a hip hinge, letting the free leg travel straight back behind you as a counterweight. Your torso and the back leg move together, roughly in line, like a see-saw tipping over the standing hip.

Go as far as your hamstring and your balance allow, then drive the hip forward to stand.

Touching the fingertips of the opposite hand towards the floor is a common variation and gives you a depth target.

What it demands

Everything the two-legged hinge asks, at roughly double the load on the working side.

Balance, and specifically balance that is being disturbed rather than held still. The demand is not standing on one leg; it is staying over one foot while the mass above it moves a long way.

Pelvic control. The hips must stay square — the free-leg side wants to open upward as you tip, and letting it turns the movement into something else.

Enough ankle and foot stability to allow all of that, which is why it is felt in the foot far more than people expect.

What usually goes wrong

The hips open. The pelvis rotates so the free-leg side rises and you finish half turned over. This is the defining error. Keeping the free leg's toes pointing at the floor rather than out to the side largely fixes it.

Bending the standing knee to reach lower. That converts it to a one-legged squat.

Rounding the back at the bottom — the same hamstring-length limit as the two-legged hinge, reached sooner because the load is higher.

Rushing to chase depth. Balance failures come from moving faster than you can correct.

Where it sits

The single-leg hinge is where the hinge pattern, single-leg balance and pelvic control meet, and that combination is why it is worth learning even though the loads involved are small.

If it is not going well, the fault is usually in one of two places, and they are separable: hip hinge for the pattern, and single-leg glute bridge for the pelvic control without the balance demand.