A single leg Romanian deadlift (RDL) is a lower-body exercise where you stand on one leg, hinge forward at the hips, and lower your torso toward the ground while your free leg extends behind you. It builds strength in the glutes and hamstrings while demanding serious balance and hip stability. The movement is essentially the one-legged version of a standard Romanian deadlift, and it’s a staple in both athletic training and general fitness programs because it trains each leg independently.
Muscles Worked
The primary driver of the single leg RDL is the gluteus maximus on your standing leg, which powers the hip extension that brings you back to standing. The hamstrings act as secondary movers, working hard through both the lowering and lifting phases. But the real distinction between this exercise and a two-legged version is what happens at the hip on the side.
A study published in the International Journal of Exercise Science measured muscle activation during single leg deadlifts versus conventional bilateral deadlifts at the same relative intensity. The gluteus medius, the muscle on the outer hip responsible for keeping your pelvis level, fired at 77.6% of its maximum capacity during the single leg version compared to 59.3% during the bilateral deadlift. That’s a roughly 30% higher activation rate. Hamstring activity was also significantly higher (82.1% vs. 74.2%), and the glute max trended higher too, though the difference there wasn’t statistically significant. Meanwhile, the spinal erectors actually worked less during the single leg version than the bilateral deadlift, likely because lighter absolute loads are used.
In practical terms, this means the single leg RDL is one of the most effective exercises for training the side-hip stabilizers that keep your knees and pelvis aligned during walking, running, and cutting movements.
How to Perform It
Start standing with your weight shifted onto one leg and a slight bend in that knee. This soft knee position is important: locking out the knee puts unnecessary stress on the joint, while bending too much turns the movement into more of a squat and shifts the work away from the glutes and hamstrings.
From here, push your hips straight back and let your torso tip forward. Your free leg should travel behind you as a counterbalance, forming a roughly straight line from head to heel as you reach the bottom position. Think of your body as a seesaw pivoting at the hip. Lower until you feel a strong stretch in the hamstring of your standing leg, typically when your torso is somewhere between parallel to the floor and a 45-degree angle, depending on your flexibility.
The most common mistake is letting the hip of the trailing leg rotate open toward the ceiling. Your shoulders, ribcage, and hips should stay square to the floor throughout the movement, as if you had a tray of water balanced on your lower back. The moment your hip opens, you lose the targeted loading on the glute and hamstring. To return to standing, squeeze your glute and drive your hips forward until you’re upright again.
If you’ve never done a standard two-legged Romanian deadlift, learn that first. Mastering the hip hinge on two feet ensures you’re actually moving at the hip joint rather than rounding or arching your spine, and it gives you a movement pattern to build on.
Where to Hold the Weight
You can perform the single leg RDL with a dumbbell, kettlebell, or barbell, and which hand holds the weight changes the exercise more than most people realize.
Holding the weight in the hand opposite your standing leg (contralateral loading) is the most common setup. This creates a natural counterbalance that makes it easier to maintain form, allows a greater range of motion, and challenges core stability in a balanced way since each side of the body counteracts the rotational forces from the other.
Holding the weight on the same side as your standing leg (ipsilateral loading) is significantly harder to stabilize. One side of your body has to work much harder to resist rotation, which ramps up core demand and trains the kind of coordinated muscle activation you need during sports and dynamic movements. The trade-off is that you’ll typically handle less weight and may sacrifice some range of motion.
For most people starting out, contralateral loading (opposite hand) is the better choice. Ipsilateral loading is a useful progression once you’ve built a solid foundation of balance and control.
Building Up to the Full Exercise
Balance is the limiting factor for most beginners, not strength. If you can’t stand on one leg for 20 to 30 seconds without wobbling, the full exercise will be frustrating. A few progressions help bridge the gap:
- Kickstand RDL: Instead of lifting your back foot completely off the ground, keep your toes lightly touching the floor behind you. This gives you a small balance assist while still loading one leg more than the other.
- Hand-supported single leg RDL: Hold onto a wall, rack, or bench with one hand while performing the movement with the other hand holding weight (or no weight). This lets you practice the hip hinge and hamstring loading without fighting for balance the entire time.
- Bodyweight single leg RDL: Once you’re comfortable with the kickstand version, try the full single leg variation with no weight. Focus on controlling the lowering phase for two to three seconds per rep.
- Loaded single leg RDL: Add a light dumbbell or kettlebell in the opposite hand once bodyweight reps feel stable and controlled.
Moving through these steps over a few weeks is far more productive than repeatedly attempting the full version with shaky form.
Benefits Beyond Muscle Building
The single leg RDL trains eccentric hamstring strength, meaning the hamstrings lengthen under load during the lowering phase. This type of contraction is directly relevant to injury prevention. A cohort study on track and field athletes found that adding single leg RDLs to a training program reduced the risk of mild to moderate hamstring strains by 66% compared to a control season (relative risk of 0.34). The exercise didn’t significantly reduce severe hamstring injuries, suggesting it works best as part of a broader prevention strategy rather than a standalone solution. Still, for an exercise that requires no partner and minimal equipment, those numbers are notable.
The eccentric loading also increases hamstring muscle fiber length over time, which is one of the primary mechanisms by which this type of training protects against future strains. Compared to the Nordic hamstring curl, a well-known hamstring injury prevention exercise, the single leg RDL generates less force on the hamstrings and is easier to perform independently. This makes it a practical option for athletes and recreational exercisers who don’t have a training partner or access to specialized equipment.
Beyond the hamstrings, the high gluteus medius activation makes this exercise valuable for anyone dealing with knee pain related to weak hips, runners looking to improve pelvic stability, or people returning from lower-body injuries who need to rebuild single leg strength and coordination.
Sets, Reps, and Programming
How you program the single leg RDL depends on your goal. For building muscle size, 3 to 5 sets of 8 to 15 reps per leg works well, using a weight that feels challenging by the last two reps. For strength, heavier loads in the range of 4 to 6 sets of 3 to 8 reps are more appropriate, though balance becomes a bigger limiting factor as the weight goes up.
Most people get the best results placing the single leg RDL after their main compound lift for the day, such as squats or conventional deadlifts. It works well as a second or third exercise in a lower-body session. Because balance fatigue accumulates quickly, performing it early in the workout (after your main lift) tends to produce better quality reps than burying it at the end when your stabilizers are already spent.
Training each leg two to three times per week is sufficient for most goals. If you’re using it primarily for injury prevention or as a warm-up drill, lighter loads for 2 to 3 sets of 8 to 10 reps will do the job.