The B-stance Romanian deadlift is a Romanian deadlift with one foot slid back so that only the ball of that foot touches the floor. The back foot is a kickstand: it keeps you balanced while the front leg does most of the work. Coaches also call it the kickstand RDL.
Nobody is credited with inventing or naming it. Brolic lists it as B-Stance Romanian Deadlift (Dumbbell), with “B-Stance RDL” and “Dumbbell B-Stance RDL” as aliases, and logs it as a one-sided exercise: one set covers both legs, and reps are counted per leg.
Muscles worked
Brolic tags the hamstrings as the primary muscle group, with the glutes, adductors, lower back and abdominals as secondary. Sean Hyson, Onnit’s editor-in-chief and a certified strength coach, puts the gluteus maximus first, with the hamstrings and spinal erectors after it.
No published study measures the B-stance: a PubMed search on October 5, 2026 for “B-stance” and “kickstand deadlift” returned nothing, so nothing establishes that it builds more muscle than a two-legged or single-leg RDL.
Set the stance
Stand as for a Romanian deadlift, feet about hip-width apart, holding one dumbbell or a pair, weight on the leg you want to work.
Slide the other foot straight back until its toes are level with the heel of the front foot. Hyson, PureGym and Holly Perkins all teach that toe-to-heel alignment; Jack Hanrahan sets the back heel just behind the front heel. Let the back heel rise so only the ball of the foot is down, and keep that foot under your own hip rather than crossed behind you or out wide.
Put about 80% of your weight on the front foot. Hanrahan and Girls Gone Strong both use that figure. Mike Robertson’s cue is to stay up on the back toes for the whole set: sinking onto the back foot takes load off the front leg.
Soften both knees. Hanrahan holds the front knee at about 10 to 20° and keeps that angle through the rep; the kickstand knee bends a little more.
Hinge
Push your hips straight back. Perkins’ cue is that the torso comes forward because the hips go back, not because you bend over. Keep the hips square; Robertson and Hanrahan both name rotation as a common fault.
Keep the dumbbells close to the front leg. Hanrahan keeps them over the middle of the front foot, not drifting ahead of it.
Stop where the hamstrings stop you, not at the floor. Lower until the hips stop and you feel a strong stretch in the front hamstring and glute with the back still flat. PureGym puts that between just below the knee and mid-shin. If the lower back starts to round, you have gone past the range.
Stand by driving the hips forward, and stop tall rather than leaning back.
If the knees keep bending as you descend, you are squatting. The front knee angle should stay about the same from top to bottom; a back foot set too far behind, with lots of knee bend, turns the lift into a split squat.
Between the two-legged and single-leg RDL
| Two-legged RDL | B-stance RDL | Single-leg RDL | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feet on the floor | Both, flat | Front foot flat, back toes only | One |
| Load on the front leg | About half | Most of it | All of it |
| Balance demand | Low | Low | High |
Hyson’s summary is that sliding one foot back as a kickstand shifts the load to the front leg while “keeping most of the stability” of the two-legged lift, so it can be loaded heavier than a single-leg RDL. Robertson treats it as the step before the single-leg RDL.
Logging
One logged set covers both legs, and the rep count is per leg: 10 reps means 10 with the left leg forward and 10 with the right. Enter the weight of one dumbbell, as the other dumbbell guides do, and note whether you held one or a pair. Hanrahan rests about 60 seconds between sides.
If one side stops short, note which leg was in front and how many reps it got rather than averaging. The free workout log holds the note, and the weekly set tally shows how these sets add to your hamstring and glute work beside two-legged RDLs.
Common questions
How heavy, compared with my two-legged RDL? Lighter. Hyson and PureGym both say you cannot lift as much as with two feet flat, and Hanrahan has you practise the kickstand hinge unloaded first. No source here gives a ratio, so start much lighter than your two-legged RDL and add weight once the back foot stays light through every rep.
One dumbbell or two, and where? Both are taught. Girls Gone Strong and Robertson hold one dumbbell in the hand opposite the front leg; Coach Lauren of Colossus Fitness holds it on the working side; Perkins and Hanrahan use a pair. Pick one and record it.
My lower back takes over. Shorten the range, lighten the load and check that the back foot is light. If it still hurts, stop; pain is not a cue.
Sources and method
- Jack Hanrahan Fitness: B-stance Romanian deadlift — set-up, the 80/20 split, the 10 to 20° knee and the back-foot mistakes; automatic captions.
- Mike Robertson: kickstand RDL — back toes, square hips, modest range, the step before the single-leg RDL; automatic captions and description.
- Onnit, Sean Hyson: B-stance RDLs — toe-to-heel alignment, the quotation, muscles worked and the single-leg comparison; automatic captions, the quotation also in Fit&Well.
- PureGym: B-stance deadlifts — range to just below the knee or mid-shin; loads lighter than the two-legged RDL.
- Girls Gone Strong, Holly Perkins, CSCS and Colossus Fitness — the 80% figure and foot width, the hips-back cue, the split-squat fault and dumbbell side; captions.
- Brolic catalog — name, aliases, one-sided logging and muscle tags.
Stance, weight-split and knee figures are starting points drawn from the demonstrations cited, not optima from a trial. The load suggestion is our arithmetic from those sources, not a measured figure.
