In the case of constructing muscle one leg at a time, the Bulgarian split squat, also often known as the rear foot elevated split squat, often gets all of the praise and a focus. But the true ones know the way underrated the front foot elevated split squat truly is.
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The unfairly missed front foot elevated split squat is gaining quite the recognition surge, especially from its use in rehab and athletic settings. This upgraded split squat variation is usually a bit of more comfortable to establish than the rear foot elevated option and it could actually skyrocket your lower body muscle, strength, and athleticism. Here’s a better take a look at this unique exercise.
Front Foot Elevated Split Squat
The front foot elevated split squat, or FFESS, requires a high-level of stability across a protracted range of motion, which might make the exercise difficult to master. Follow these technique cues to tackle this single-leg exercise.
Step 1 — Set Up Your Platform
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You’ll notice an enormous profit from even the slightest elevation. Any platform that’s not less than two to 4 inches high might be sufficient. A small aerobic step or one or two weight plates work nicely. Use bumper plates, if possible, to stop sliding. In case your gym has an Olympic lifting platform with a raised edge, that may work too.
Form Tip: A staircase might appear to be a convenient option, nevertheless it’s likely too high to start out with and might make the movement too awkward. It would find yourself feeling more like an indecisive hybrid between a split squat and a step-up while delivering the outcomes of neither.
Step 2 — Elevate Your Front Foot
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Having a robust and stable front foot is, obviously, key to the front foot elevated split squat. Stand upright and set one foot flat on the platform. Keep your entire foot in touch throughout each repetition. Don’t raise up onto your toes or heel.
Form Tip: Supportive shoes can play a surprisingly significant role in your mobility, stability, and force production. (1) Old fashioned Chuck Taylor sneakers, dedicated weightlifting shoes, or any stable-soled shoe is preferable. Super-floppy, extremely cushioned trainers usually are not ideal because stability might be compromised as your foot compresses into the cushioning.
Step 3 — Set Your Back Foot
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Your back foot needs to be as secure and stable as your front foot. Keep your front foot in place and step back a cushty distance for you, depending in your leg length and general mobility.
Depending in your ankle mobility, your back foot will likely be on the ball relatively than flat on the bottom. This is suitable because this foot is primarily for support and balance, and won’t be producing much force into the ground.
Form Tip: For max balance and stability, be sure your back foot is in its own “lane,” indirectly in step with your front foot. You shouldn’t feel such as you’re perched on a skinny balance beam. It’s best to feel stable and grounded.
Step 4 — Lower Yourself With Control
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Take a deep breath and feel each feet securely in place before descending into the rep. Feel your lower body and your core being still before descending. Keep your upper body upright together with your shoulders pulled back.
Bend your front leg and lower yourself with control. Descend as little as possible, ideally reaching your back knee to the bottom.
Form Tip: Depending in your mobility, your back knee should gently graze the bottom — with an emphasis on gently. Some lifters fail to listen in the course of the descent and quickly smash their back knee into the bottom. Don’t do this.
Step 5 — Drive As much as the Starting Position
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Once you’ve reached the deepest position your hip and leg mobility allows, push through your front leg to drive as much as a standing position
Keep your upper body near vertical as you drive up. Don’t allow yourself to bend forward on the waist. Repeat all repetitions with one leg before switching sides.
Form Tip: It may be tempting to bounce out of the underside by leveraging the stretch reflex — a muscle’s ability to “rebound” in the course of the transition from a stretched position to a full contraction for increased momentum and power. (2) Avoid it to permit your glutes and quads to do all of the work. It will construct more muscle by increasing the time under tension, while keeping you safer by reducing ballistic forces.
This exercise can feel tricky, especially whenever you’re awkwardly establishing for the primary time. Listed below are some common mistakes to avoid.
Not Being Mobile Enough
While this exercise will be great for constructing mobility, in case your hip and ankle mobility resemble the Tin Man, you’ll struggle to go deep enough to reap the muscle- and strength-building advantages. (3)
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In case you’re unable to descend near full-depth, the exercise won’t be any different for constructing size or strength than a typical split squat, but it could actually still be helpful as a mobility drill in the event you deal with improving your depth as an alternative of adding reps or weight.
Avoid it: To perform the exercise efficiently, do a dynamic warm-up prior to your leg workout to make sure your hips and ankles are thoroughly mobilized and ready for training. Over time, this could help to get into the deeper positions of knee flexion and hip flexion needed to achieve the underside position.
Not Going Low Enough
The aim of the platform elevation is to extend the range of motion. It permits you to get into degrees of knee and hip flexion that you simply couldn’t access with other exercises.
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Nevertheless, it’s common to see people do the primary few reps with an ideal deep reps but, when the pump sets in, they begin to compromise the range of motion. Soon enough, the “front foot elevated split squats” seem like using less range than traditional split squats with each feet on the bottom.
Avoid it: Select an elevation level that works for you and keep every rep consistent. Attempt to flippantly touch your back knee to the bottom each rep, or not less than get close. Using a folded towel or padded mat under your back knee can function a reliable goal so long as it allows your back knee to achieve lower than your front foot.
Being Too Wobbly
The elevated front foot-position will make balance tougher. The more wobbly you’re, the less muscle-building force you may generate. Not to say, you’ll feel self-conscious in the event you topple over while holding a pair of sunshine dumbbells.
In case you’re focused on maintaining balance greater than you’re focused on actually training your legs, the general stimulus might be reduced and also you’ll waste energy.
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Avoid it: Take your time to secure your foot position before doing a few warm-up sets. Even in case your working weight might be relatively light, a warm-up set or two with only your body weight could be a game changer in preparing your nervous system and core musculature to stabilize the load effectively.
Consider including the FFESS in your program since it’s easy to progress. It also never runs out of progression because, in the event you do manage to expire of weights, your legs might be beyond elite status at that time.
Begin with Body weight
The bodyweight-only FFESS will be quite humbling. Even for some advanced lifters, the exercise will be difficult especially when done toward the latter a part of a workout. Performing the exercise as a “finisher” when your legs are pre-fatigued from heavy training will be an eye-opening, leg-burning experience.
The body weight FFESS can be a wonderful go-to exercise when you might have limited equipment, like whenever you’re training at home or on the road.
Loading with Dumbbells
When you master body weight FFESS, consider adding load via dumbbells. That is the simplest and commonest setup for loading — simply hold a pair of dumbbells at your sides.
Using a narrow platform helps prevent the dumbbells from clashing with the platform, especially if you might have longer arms and reach maximum depth. Controlling the load and never allowing the dumbbells to hit the platform works tremendous, as well.
Because the weights get heavier, and as you’re in a position to do more reps per set, your grip will likely fatigue quite a bit over the course of multiple sets. Once you’re feeling it kick in, it’s best to use lifting straps or some form of assistance to eliminate your grip as a weak link.
Barbell Front Foot Elevated Split Squat
Barbells allow for essentially the most loading, but also they are essentially the most time consuming to establish together with adding more instability. Nevertheless, this can be a obligatory compromise when you get strong.
Be certain that you might have a robust, stable platform to support the added weight. Arrange in a rack with safety pins, just like performing squats. Progress like most barbell exercises, adding a bit of more weight and a couple of more reps from week to week.
This exercise has some unique ways of delivering its advantages. Here’s why it’s best to incorporate the FFESS as soon as possible.
Hypertrophy and Strength
The front foot elevated split squat will produce single-leg strength and hypertrophy due to a protracted range of motion and unique positioning in comparison with other exercise options. The front foot elevation lets you push your center of mass forward, bringing your hamstring against your calf without compromising torso position.
This stretches the muscles of the quads and glutes under load and increases mechanical tension in comparison with bilateral squat variations. The unilateral (single-leg) nature helps with addressing potential imbalances and likewise maximizes range of motion, which increases hypertrophy. (3)
The strength you gain from this exercise translates efficiently to many other exercises. You’ll notice your single-leg and bilateral (two-leg) lower body exercises getting stronger after specializing in the FFESS as an adjunct movement.
Pain-Free Training
Considered one of the essential advantages people explore this exercise in the primary place is to search out pain-free alternatives to barbell squatting. In case your joints are achy, this exercise could be a perfect option.
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It lets you lighten the load while achieving ranges of motions you likely didn’t have access to. Over time, you achieve pain-free muscle constructing. As well as, the FFESS reinforces latest degrees of hip, knee, and ankle mobility.
The FFESS prioritizes your lower body muscles — perfect in your favorite leg day. Some core stability and upper body stability is trained as well, especially when using added load.
Quadriceps
The front foot elevated split squat primarily trains your quads. The front thigh muscle gets worked through a protracted range of motion as you get into deep angles of knee flexion (bending). Together with your front foot elevated, you might have the chance to drive your knee forward for a deep weighted stretch within the quads.
Glutes
Just like many squat variations, your glutes are also going to get a major stimulus in the course of the FFESS, especially in the underside stretched position.
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You’ll likely feel more glute soreness, especially in the event you’re used to a comparatively shortener range of motion from traditional squats and split squats.
Adductors
The FFESS can even nail your inner thighs (adductors), particularly in your front leg. This muscle gets a high degree of stabilizing motion in the course of the exercise, together with some dynamic contraction to increase your hips at the highest of the movement.
Generally speaking, it’s best to do unilateral exercises after heavier bilateral exercises to avoid fatiguing necessary stabilizers. You may program the FFESS after your heavy sets of squats, possibly because the second or third exercise of a lower body day.
Nevertheless, the stimulus from the FFESS is effective and comprehensive for the quads, glutes, and adductors, so it’s will also be valid to program them as your first exercise. This is right, for instance, for lifters with achy knees who don’t do well with heavy bilateral movements early within the workout. Prioritizing the front foot elevated split squat allows your hips, knees, and ankles to be more thoroughly warmed up before proceeding to relatively heavier lifting.
Moderate to Light Weight, High Reps
This exercise is best fitted to moderate to light weight. This enables for less joint strain and connective tissue stress, and lets you higher control the load which might provide you with a greater mind-muscle connection.
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Most individuals will prefer to do these with relatively light weight and better reps to create a robust pump and a good stronger mind-muscle connection. With this approach, some lifters may even give you the option skip any warm-up sets, depending on how they feel and the way their body responds. Pick a load you may do for not less than 12 reps, and crank out two or three sets of 10 to twenty per leg.
Heavy Weight, Low Reps
In case you do FFESS early within the workout, you may go heavier. Your nervous system might be fresh and you may stabilize heavier loads. Three or 4 sets of 5 to 10 reps (per leg) is already pretty heavy for this exercise. You’ll still need one or two warm-up sets, especially in the event you’re strong and plan on approaching your limits.
Using extremely heavy weights for very low reps just isn’t advisable because the steadiness required for them will not be value it. It’s not the style of exercise to check your one-rep max because the danger:reward just isn’t value it.
There’s a few effective variations of the front foot elevated split squat for those which can be more adventurous or need to progress beyond the usual movement.
Heel-Elevated Split Squat
As a substitute of just elevating your front foot, add a further plate or ramp to raise your heel even higher. This puts your foot right into a steep angle, creating much more knee flexion and makes an already quad-dominant split squat much more quad-dominant.
That is great for those in need of significant quad growth or for athletes who need to get used to deeper ranges of knee flexion, including combat sports athletes, strength sports athletes, football players, or sprinters.
Double-Elevated Split Squat
If you should maximize your mobility and range of motion, you may elevate each the back and front foot. Essentially, you’re combining the FFESS with a Bulgarian split squat. More range of motion for each the front leg and the back leg will help to skyrocket your quad and glute gains.
Setting this up will be cumbersome and requires some extra space, but when you’ve determined a superb arrange and know an efficient distance to set each platform, it needs to be pretty smooth every time you’re within the gym.
Incessantly Asked Questions
What makes the front foot elevated split squat different than the rear foot elevated split squat (Bulgarian split squat)?
Depending in your structure and mobility level, the 2 exercises may not be all that different. Nevertheless, most individuals will feel their quads more in the course of the FFESS. You may consider the front foot elevated split squat as a more “quad-dominant version” of Bulgarian split squats.
FFESS are also easier to setup and usually feel more comfortable to perform. Elevating your back foot with Bulgarian split squats often requires more hip and ankle mobility and could be a larger challenge to keep up balance.
Why don’t I see more people within the gym doing the front foot elevated split squat?
Bulgarian split squats are simply more popular lately. They’ve garnered a status for being painful — the “good kind” of pain from post-workout soreness — and more “hardcore.” They’re an awesome exercise, however the front foot elevated split squat is beginning to catch up in popularity due to the rehab world.
Many physiotherapists assign the FFESS as a solution to train deep ranges of motion with reduced knee pain. Many individuals learn the movement and find yourself realizing, “Oh, snap, these are great even when I’m not attempting to rehab my knee due to the gnarly quad pump.”
Single-leg training is commonly missed in lots of training routines. Performing exercises with an increased range of motion, even moreso. The FFESS is an easy solution to each of those deficiencies. This comprehensive exercise will payoff with more size, more strength, higher mobility, and improved all-around performance. You simply have to step as much as the challenge.
References
- Legg, H. S., Glaister, M., Cleather, D. J., & Goodwin, J. E. (2017). The effect of weightlifting shoes on the kinetics and kinematics of the back squat. Journal of sports sciences, 35(5), 508–515. https://doi.org/10.1080/02640414.2016.1175652
- Seiberl, W., Hahn, D., Power, G. A., Fletcher, J. R., & Siebert, T. (2021). Editorial: The Stretch-Shortening Cycle of Energetic Muscle and Muscle-Tendon Complex: What, Why and How It Increases Muscle Performance?. Frontiers in physiology, 12, 693141. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2021.693141
- Schoenfeld, B. J., & Grgic, J. (2020). Effects of range of motion on muscle development during resistance training interventions: A scientific review. SAGE open medicine, 8, 2050312120901559. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050312120901559
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