Chloe Kim says single leg squats and weights helped her get Olympic ready and win gold for Team USA

• Olympic snowboarder Chloe Kim won her second career gold medal for Team USA in Beijing.
• Kim says a single-leg focused workout routine helps build lower-body strength to improve control.

Chloe Kim became the youngest women's snowboarder in history to win two gold medals after her performance in the halfpipe event at the Beijing Olympics.

The 21-year-old California native was praised for her mastery of snowboard control by NBC commentators, with sharp turns and stunts while in mid-air. The muscles responsible for those turns and stunts are primarily in her legs.

Kim has used a simple, yet effective workout technique to build those muscles: single-leg strength workouts, which she revealed in two Instagram posts.

The two workouts Kim said she leans on most are pistol squats — also known as single-leg squats — and lateral lunges. Each one only exercises one leg at a time, as opposed to traditional back squats and deadlifts which work out both legs and the core at the same time.

Pistol squats are a popular squat variation that builds strength and balance

Kim's first exercise can build leg muscle, but more importantly for her, it can help correct imbalances in the body and improve a person's balance and stability on each individual leg, compared to traditional back squats, which test a person's ability to balance weight evenly on both legs.

Andre Adams, a master trainer with the National Academy of Sports Medicine previously told Insider's Gabby Landsverk that single-leg squats are particularly helpful for building symmetry in the legs and glutes, which is important for aesthetics as well, he said.

"By switching to single-leg exercise, it doubles the options you have to get in shape from home," Adams said. "It helps pre-exhaust the muscle and coming back to compound movement recruits more muscle fibers, burns more calories, and builds overall strength."

Single-leg lateral lunges target thigh and glute muscles specifically

Most lower-body workouts, including most squat variations, target multiple muscles like the thigh, glute, hamstring, calf, and some core muscles.

But single-leg lateral lunges are a workout that more precisely targets thigh and glute muscles, but they can also slightly work out the core.

For Kim, the workout also improves her hip mobility and flexibility, which allows her to quickly and precisely turn directions while snowboarding.