The lateral squat.

Movement in daily life, and particularly in sport, is multidirectional. In sports, such as football and basketball, athletes frequently change directions and perform repeated side-to-side accelerations and decelerations using sliding, shuffling and cutting movements. Many training approaches focus almost exclusively on the front to back motions that occur in what is called the sagittal plane. This plane is important for posture, but stability and power involve stopping and starting actions that often occur in the side-to-side, or frontal plane. The lateral squat provides a foundation for these side-to-side motions to bridge the gap to sport specific skills. Two key factors in side-to-side movement are powerful push off with outside leg and staying low (Shimokochi et al., 2013). The outside leg, in particular the powerful posterior chain muscles (i.e. gluteal hip extensors), generate most of the power to push yourself sideways in stepping, sliding, shuffling or explosive jumping maneuvers. Staying low allows these posterior chain muscles to be effective and creates an optimal push off angle to produce force to create side-to-side motion. Many athletes get hurt because they pull or reach too much with their inside leg, resulting in adductor or hamstring strains. Enhancing movement literacy during either decelerating or accelerating frontal