Lateral Bound
Also works: Abductors · Calves · Glutes · Hamstrings · Quadriceps
A maximal sideways leap off one leg, landing on the other and immediately bounding back. Almost all lower-body training happens in the straight-ahead plane; the lateral bound is where you learn to produce and — more importantly — absorb force sideways, which is what the adductors and the outside of the hip actually do in sport.
Own the movement
Set up first, then execute. Every cue below is something you can check on your next set.
Before the first rep
- Stand side-on to your direction of travel in a quarter-squat, weight over the outside foot.
- Give yourself a clear four to five metres of non-slip floor — grass, turf or rubber, not a polished gym floor.
- Set your hips back slightly so the outside glute and adductor are loaded, not just the knee.
- Put a strip of tape down as a distance marker so each set has a number to beat.
- Point both feet forward, square to the front. Turning the feet out lets you cheat the push into a rotation.
Every rep
Breathing & tempo — Exhale sharply as you push off, breathe freely between reps. Explosive off the ground; on the landing there is no tempo target beyond silence and a stable knee.
Before you load it
- Warm the adductors up properly first — lateral lunges and leg swings. A cold groin taking a maximal one-legged deceleration is the classic way to strain it.
- Do these on a surface with grip. A foot that slides on the landing puts the whole force through the adductor.
Sets, reps & load
Where to start, and what to change when it stops being hard.
Bodyweight only — never hold dumbbells for this. Progress by distance first: add 10-15 cm to your tape mark once every landing is quiet and stable. When distance stalls, progress instead by shortening ground contact time, or by adding a second bound before you reset.
What goes wrong
The errors that show up most often, and the cue that fixes each one.
Cut the bound distance by a third and stick every landing for two seconds. Cue the knee to track over the second toe. Rebuild distance only once the knee stays stacked on every rep.
Push the hips away from the direction of travel and keep your head at roughly the same height throughout. A tape mark on the floor tells you honestly whether you are covering ground.
Cap sets at four to six bounds per side and rest a full minute. Fatigued single-leg landings are where adductor strains happen, and they train nothing the first three reps did not.
You are landing with a locked leg and no time to yield. Aim to touch down mid-foot and let the ankle, knee and hip each give a little, spreading the landing over roughly a third of a second. Take 30 cm off the bound until the landing is silent, then rebuild.
Why bother
Squats, deadlifts and jumps all live in the sagittal plane. The groin strains and knee-valgus collapses that end seasons happen sideways, when a planted foot has to stop a body that is still travelling laterally. The bound trains exactly that: the adductors on the landing leg lengthen under speed to arrest the movement, then shorten to send you back the other way.
The distance travelled is the honest measure here, not the height. Mark your landing foot with a piece of tape and try to beat it. If you can bound 1.5 to 2 metres and land in silence on one leg without your knee drifting inward, your frontal-plane control is in reasonable shape.
Where it fits
After the warm-up, before anything heavy, one or two sessions a week. Three to five sets of four to six bounds per side with a full minute or more between sets. This is nervous-system work with a demanding eccentric on a single leg — the moment your landings get loud or your distance drops, the set is over. Do not bolt it onto the end of a leg day.
If this one isn't it
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Asked and answered
Is a lateral bound the same as a skater jump?
They are the same shape, but people usually run skaters as a conditioning move — twenty continuous reps, short hops, heart rate up. A bound is a maximal effort for distance with a full reset and real rest. If you are counting reps for a minute, you are doing skaters; if you are measuring distance and stopping at six, you are bounding. Only the second one trains power.
Do I have to stick the landing or can I rebound straight away?
Stick it until you can do so on every rep with a stable knee, then start rebounding. The stuck version trains deceleration, which is the part that protects you; the rebound version trains the elastic return, which is the part that makes you fast. Most people skip straight to the rebound and never build the first.
Will this actually help my groin hold up in sport?
It helps, because it loads the adductors eccentrically at speed, which is the mechanism behind most groin strains. It is not a complete answer on its own — pair it with slower strength work like Copenhagen planks or band adductions so the tissue has capacity as well as coordination.
Can I do these on the same day as heavy squats?
Yes, as long as they come first, before the squats. Plyometrics need a fresh nervous system. Put them after your heavy work and you get the joint stress of a maximal single-leg landing with none of the speed adaptation.