What is B stance?
Taking a B stance or staggered stance is an epic way to do unilateral (single limb) training. Often single leg work requires a decent amount of balance and stability in order to get a good stimulus, which can be distracting from the goal OF better stability and balance, increase unilateral strength, correcting structural or muscular imbalances, etc.
Unilateral work should be a staple in your training program. When we think about creating a training program we wanna cover all our bases in regards to movement patterns (hinge, squat, horizontal and vertical pushing and pulling, carries). This includes bilateral and unilateral work within these movement patterns.
Of course your training program will look specific to your goals, but we can safely say that if you're wanting to feel like a robust, well-rounded human, get after it in the gym and live life full out outside of the gym, making sure you have your bases covered in terms of movement will have you thriving.
Typical single leg exercise might look like:
Single leg squats (pistols) variations
Single leg step ups
Single leg Romanian deadlifts
Single leg hip thrust
RAD.
So why is B stance?!
With many of those single leg exercises a lot of balance is required to perform them, which means the emphasis of strength can be removed. When you use the B stance you're keeping your weight overwhelmingly to one leg while keeping the ball of the other foot on the ground with light contact so it can just aid in balance and not interfere with the main event!
The great thing about B stance work (or any unilateral work) is how they expose imbalances we have in our body and spark curiosity about our movement! Not a bad thing, jut an interetsing thing. Not one of us are completely in symmetry. One side will be more dominant and this can twist and curve throughout our body.
How to do it?
For the squat (listen to the cues in the video):
Set your working leg (front leg) up like you would for a regular squat stance. your knee should be tracking over your toe, connecting with the ground with your little toe, big toe and inside of foot.
The back foot that is resting on the ground is truly just there to rest. All your weight should be on that front foot.
You can have your back foot turned out in whatever way feels good for you.
Start with bodyweight to understand where your back foot needs to be for you, then add weight as you like.
How to put them into my program?
First of all, let me do that thinking for you inside The Bold Collective where I take the guesswork out for you.
Secondly, you could replace this for any single leg squat variation. If you have been doing step ups, try these instead.
This would be an accessory exercise to your main squat lift.
Also give hinge and bridge variations a whirl.
So, I am curious: do you do these? Have you done these? Do you love 'em or hate 'em? Let me know in the comments below!