As a fitness trainer, I get a lot of questions like “What is the best exercise for ______” fill in the blank. I get asked as if there is one exercise that “rules them all” (to borrow a phrase from Lord of the Rings). One of the most common areas of concerns is the lower body, specifically the butt and thighs. Today I’m going to share one of my personal favorite lower body exercises and all of its awesome variations. It’s called the Rear-Foot Elevated Split Squat (a.k.a. Bulgarian Split Squat). This exercise is so effective that once you master it, your thighs and knees will be bullet proof!
Before we jump into this, one point I definitely don’t want to feed into is the idea of individual body part training and spot reduction. Doing this killer leg exercise will NOT target fat loss in your legs. I am a fervent believer in total body training, meaning that we train the upper body, lower body, and core during every single workout. By training the whole body at once we maximally stimulate lean muscle gain and metabolism and promote total body fat burning in order to effectively eliminate the body fat in all our favorite areas; yep the stubborn fat areas that prevent a good body from becoming a great body. Plus, a diet high in lean protein, fiber, and green veggies and low in unnatural fats and refined sugars and starches is of course a pre-requisite if you want to see your muscles pop in a good way. It is also important to know that you lose fat in a genetically predetermined way. You had no control where your body put on the body fat and likewise no control where it takes it off. You can do all the crunches you want but without total body training, proper eating habits, and enough time to get to those stubborn fat areas you will never get rid of your gut, or your jiggly arms, or the junk in the trunk.
Massage away your trouble areas? Are they for real???
Moving onto the main event: the world’s greatest lower body exercise. My favorite leg exercises are any sort of single leg exercise and their variations, which include split squats. I prefer single leg exercise in lieu of their double leg counterparts for a myriad of reasons. For people with back issues, single leg exercises allow them to safely perform lower body exercises without putting their lower lumbar spine in jeopardy of hyper flexion or excessive rounding that can cause back spasms in the short run and herniated discs in the long run. Furthermore, I feel there’s often such a strength and/or mobility imbalance between one leg and the other that it’s critical to address one leg at a time to really shore up the weak links. And life is performed assymetrically. Meaning we rarely lift an object in a real life scenario with perfect double leg squat technique, most of the time we will be in a slightly staggered stance. When we walk or run it is an example of single leg lunges. So single leg exercises mimic life in a truly functional way.
My favorite lunge variation is called the rear foot elevated split squat. Regular split squats are basically stationary lunges. Begin with one foot in front of the other in a long stride position. A long stance position puts both knee at a 90 degree angle or slightly more when in the down position of the lunge. Both feet stay planted toes straight ahead in the long stance and do not move. The split squat is then performed keeping the front foot flat and dropping the back knee towards the floor. This is the basic split squat, which I consider the basic of all single-leg, knee dominant exercises. Once you have mastered the basic split squat you’re ready to move on to the rear foot elevated split squat. Like the name infers, we’re going to elevate the back foot on a chair, bench, box, or any other sturdy foot support, usually about 12-18 inches high. You’ll put your front leg well in front of you in order to make sure that your front knee and ankle are lined up, in other words your lower leg will be completely vertical when in the bottom of the lunge. In general, I tell people to exaggerate how far to put your front leg forward so that the front knee is almost slightly behind the ankle as this really helps reduce sheer forces on the knees. Initiate the exercise by loading the front heel (not the ball of your foot) and dropping your hips as low as you can in a pain-free range of motion while staying really tall up top with a proud chest and shoulders down and back. I use a stick to help maintain proper posture. The back of your head, shoulder blades and tailbone should stay in contact with the stick throughout the entire range of motion. Ideally I want to drop the back knee deep enough to ensure the front thigh gets down to horizontal. To help with this I often put a 2-3″ pad under my knee so I have something to gauge my squat depth. Finish the rep by explosively driving through your front heel to return to the top of the movement. You can start with body weight only in search of front thigh parallel to the floor or lower depth and then progress by adding speed of movement or by adding resistance. You can even incorporate some very cool combination movements with this lower body exercise like adding a curl to press at the top of the movement or even by raising dumbbells overhead to really challenge your core and single-leg balance and stability.
I have yet to find an exercise that hits the legs as hard as this baby does. In particular, it really helps strengthen your vastus medialis, that inner quad muscle that looks like a teardrop, which is heavily responsible for tracking your patella and keeping your knee caps in line. So if you have a history of overtraining injuries or patella-femoral issues this exercise is phenomenal for keeping your knees as bulletproof as possible, not to mention a dulcet set of thighs.
As an added bonus it provides a very good stretch for the hip flexor of your back leg, an area that is often very tight, especially for guys. Any exercise that allows you to simultaneously stretch and strengthen your body is a real keeper. And because of the unstable nature of the exercise (balancing on one leg) it forces the stabalizers (inner and outer thigh muscles) to really fire. So, don’t waste another moment with the useless abductor/adductor machine (a.k.a. thigh master 2000 ) and get off your butt and crank it with the world’s best lower body exercise today!
Stay Fit
Mat “the trainer”
PS- Feel free to post your comments on spot reduction or the rear foot elevated split squats or your opinion on the best lower body exercise..
PPS- as always feel free to share this blog post with anyone that is motivated by competition or anyone looking to shed some fat, get stronger and feel more energy.
PPPS- word of the day: dulcet [duhl-sit] adjective: pleasant or agreeable to the eye or feelings; soothing.
To book Mat to speak at your Utah Valley company, club, or organizations please contact him by email at matgover@mac.com or by phone at (801) 836.7185. For a free one-week trial to his Orem boot camp to experience the best personal training in Utah Valley please call Mat or drop by the gym (1623 N State St, Orem right next to Costa Vida).
“It amazes me that most people spend more time planning out next summer’s vacation than they do planning the rest of their lives.” Patricia Fripp, Professional Speaker
The least effective tool in your fat loss arsenal is exercise that burns calories but does not do anything for increasing your metabolism or maintaining your lean muscle tissue. Enter traditional, steady state “cardio” including hard cardio and low intensity cardio. Both these have their benefits in the fat loss fight but should play only a small role.
MHR. Do you know how many hours you would have to walk to burn any significant amount of calories? A 175-lb man would burn about 250 calories/hour and a 130-pound woman would burn just over 200 calories/hour. Because this is performed in the “ideal fat loss range” which means a larger percentage (75% at best) of the calories will most likely be fat that’s still very few calories. Seventy-five percent of 250 and 200 are 188 and 150 respectively. Good job! You just burned off the caloric equivalent of a large apple, and you did nothing to stimulate your metabolism. In a metabolically charged strength workout or a 20-30 minute HIIT you’ll easily burn that and then some, especially when you account for the “after burn” of an elevated metabolism.
In the last post I introduced the 2 most important factors in fat loss…nutrition and nutrition. In fact, nutrition is so important I don’t even bother measuring or testing a client’s body fat unless they have committed to a nutrition plan (preferably Precision Nutrition or The Carb Rotation Diet). This week I’m continuing with the Fat Loss Hierarchy with #3…
