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I have been using one leg stand for balance exercise and the other leg is in front of me about 6 inches off the ground and extended. But I happened to view some other articles on balance exercises on one leg and they seem to vary on what is done with the opposing leg.

Usually the other leg has the knee bent anywhere up to 90 degrees. I keep my other leg straight in front on me so the knee cannot be bent and slightly off the ground. Is there any exercise studies that recommend any particular way to do this exercise? Maybe there is no answer, no worries but I am rather curious.

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    what exercise is that? you mention some articles, can you edit your question to add some links as reference so we know what you're talking about?
    – Luciano
    Mar 28 at 11:50
  • OK thank you. I will edit to make more clear and see if I can add a link.
    – Sedumjoy
    Mar 28 at 15:04

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Truthfully, I don't know of any study on this, but from my own personal experience, largely from doing a variety of balancing exercises on one leg in martial arts, the position of the leg has some minor impact on what muscles you have to use to hold yourself erect (a leg drawn straight up with the knee bent will have more of your weight centered compared to doing a front or back scale by lifting the leg with the knee straight), but the primary effect is the muscular effort required to hold that leg in place. Even if you are using your hands to hold the raised leg (common in the bent-knee variation I mentioned before), you still have to engage muscles to maintain height. In more extreme movements, such as straight-leg raises, you will likely have to move your torso to counter-weight your leg.

Personally, I just vary the foot position when I do balances so that I practice it in a variety of positions. The three most common ones are the knee raised and clasped to my chest because it gives me more of a stretch, a straight leg but with the raised leg just slightly off the ground to the front of me because it involves the least muscular effort, and raised with the knee pointing sideways so that I can also work on ankle rotations.

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    Thank you for the insight. ! I didn't include it in the question but I was trying to be careful because one of my hip labrums is torn so I want to minimize the stress on that leg to keep it from getting inflammed.
    – Sedumjoy
    Mar 29 at 2:58

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