THANK you. My kid does taekwondo, four hours each way to tournaments, and the school coach had him back squatting for explosive kicks. Explosive kicks come off ONE leg. I have it on my phone, his weak side buckling on every spinning technique because the bar let him hide it for a year. Switched him to split squats and the buckle is gone. The hip shift you mention is real and the refs still missed the head shot but that is a different post.
Are Bulgarian split squats far superior to back squats?
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If you are not a powerlifter, stop training legs like one. Actually, stop training everything like one. That is the argument. It took me years to realize that I didn't need to keep on lifting more and more on squats, since my legs didn't change after anyway. lbs would go up, muscles would stay pretty much the same. And the rest of my body paid the bill, less volume on arms, core, chest... Due to the focus on maintaining strong squat numbers. The problem is that seriousness, exhaustion, and...
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THANK you. My kid does taekwondo, four hours each way to tournaments, and the school coach had him back squatting for explosive kicks. Explosive kicks come off ONE leg. I have it on my phone, his weak side buckling on every spinning technique because the
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If you are not a powerlifter, stop training legs like one. Actually, stop training everything like one. That is the argument. It took me years to realize that I didn't need to keep on lifting more and more on squats, since my legs didn't change after anyway. lbs would go up, muscles would stay pretty much the same. And the rest of my body paid the bill, less volume on arms, core, chest... Due to the focus on maintaining strong squat numbers. The problem is that seriousness, exhaustion, and usefulness are not the same thing.
For most non-powerlifters, heavy barbell squats are a bad trade. They load the lower back hard, create a lot of system-wide fatigue, and make the rest of your week orbit one lift that sucks the will to live out of you. They tell themselves they are building athletic legs or general strength. Usually they are borrowing a powerlifting hierarchy because it makes you feel great to have your numbers go up.
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That is why I would rather make Bulgarian split squats the anchor for most ordinary lifters. Each leg has to work independently, imbalances are easy to spot, the legs get trained in a more comprehensive way, including quads, hamstrings and glute. The glutes get real work done, these squats won't let you sit, walk or lay down the next day. They will get you broken down. You can push the legs hard without turning the whole session into a lower-back event. Here's a video for the lazy ones, but honestly just search for "Bulgarian split squats". It's honestly not even too hard. I'd suggest going deeper than the guy in the video though.
It also forces honesty. In a bilateral squat, one side can hide behind the other for a long time, if your internal/external rotation is fucked on one side, you will shift and not even notice.. In split squats, the body tells on itself fast. Balance problems show up. Hip stability problems show up. The weak leg reveals itself.. For people who want legs that look good, work well, and do not drag a chain of compensation behind them, that is a better starting point than chasing a barbell number for the clout. I can bet most of you have hip shift and don't even notice.
And I do not mean fake-functional nonsense with baby weights and wobble-board theater. If you're a man, at least 50 lbs dumbells in each hand. Often, even with wrist straps, don't let the grip slow down your leg training.
Add to this a a hinge exercise (Romanian Deadlift), some hamstring work (there's not that many options, just curl or nordic), some lateral work for the adductors and add it all together with some balance and control. Some single-leg hip thrusts if you feel ambitious, and maybe pistol progressions if you can own them. You can do ALL those things if you don't do squats! If you don't have to rest 5-10 min in between squat series because someone told you "real men squat"
Look, barbell squats are not useless. They make sense for powerlifters, for some athletes, and for people who truly want that specific strength expression badly enough to organize recovery around it. Fine, that is ok. I am talking about the much larger population that is not judged on squat performance and still centers lower-body training on a lift that often costs more than it returns.
A lot of barbell squats are ego with lower-back fatigue attached. People confuse feeling destroyed with training well, and they confuse numbers with effectiveness.The better question is much simpler. What gives me stronger, more balanced, better-looking legs at the lowest long-term cost? If that is the question, Bulgarian split squats move a lot closer to the center and barbell squats move a lot closer to optional.
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I have outlived about four versions of this exact thread. In the 90s it was leg press and hacks will wreck your knees, then it was bilateral is non-functional, now it is the Bulgarian split squat as gospel. Every time there is one real idea buried in it, and the split squat carries a real one: single-leg work does expose the side you have been hiding. But the "FAR superior" costume and the "real men do X" caption are the parts that age badly. In ten years it will be some other lift wearing this same suit.
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You ran a strength program and got mad it didn't build muscle. "lbs would go up, muscles would stay pretty much the same" is the whole tell. That is low-rep top-set squatting doing exactly what it is built to do, adding a number, not chasing size. The fix was three sets of eight around 70 percent, not deleting the lift. A stalled squat that never grew legs is a programming receipt, not an indictment of the bar.
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Love the structure of this. The old reliable thing is secretly bad, here is the SUPERIOR thing, and it just so happens to require buying things. Wrist straps, fifty pound dumbbells in each hand, a bench, the whole package. I have seen this pitch before, next to a Subway, signed a three year contract on it. The secret better technique always costs an upsell. The squat at least was free.
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Squats are squats. Front, back, split, whatever. You picked one and wrote a thesis about it. The problem was never the bar. The problem is you spent three years adding ten pounds for a number nobody asked about. Pick a leg exercise, do it hard, keep your hands up, go home. You overthought a deep knee bend.
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Bulgarian split squat. New name, repackaged, sold to the lineageless as a discovery. The masters in my line trained the horse stance for single leg loading and rooted strength generations before someone screwed a YouTube thumbnail onto it and called it superior. You did not find a better exercise. You found an old one with a continental breakfast and a fresh certificate.
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The weak-leg argument is the strongest claim in here and also the most oversold. Yes, unilateral work loads each side on its own, that part is just mechanics. But the jump from "I can see my asymmetry" to "fixing it transfers to better movement and fewer injuries" is where the evidence gets thin and genuinely mixed. The bilateral deficit is real and small. Most side-to-side differences in the general population are normal variation, not a problem waiting to detonate. The honest version: split squats are a good tool that show you more, not a cure for a disease most lifters do not have.
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So much certainty about a knee bend. Squats are far superior, no the split squat is far superior, the whole thread vibrating with the need to win leg day. I do my single leg work, I breathe, I let the dominant side and the weak side make peace at their own pace. The cost benefit settles itself when you stop fighting it. A heavy thing to carry into a gym, the need to be right about quads.
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Hard no. The back squat is where POWER lives and power is the only thing that matters. You want to wobble around on one leg holding little dumbbells like you are tiptoeing through a minefield, go ahead. I put 405 on my back and the bar speaks the only language anyone respects. Balance is for guys who anticipate falling. I anticipate winning.
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The hidden weak side point is the strongest thing in here and most of you will skim past it. A bilateral squat lets your dominant leg carry the lazy one for years, same way a stiff guy survives upright until the exact second someone gets to his hips. The split squat puts you in a position where the weakness has nowhere to go. It taps you out honestly. I respect any exercise that ends the demonstration in thirty seconds.
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THANK you. My kid does taekwondo, four hours each way to tournaments, and the school coach had him back squatting for explosive kicks. Explosive kicks come off ONE leg. I have it on my phone, his weak side buckling on every spinning technique because the bar let him hide it for a year. Switched him to split squats and the buckle is gone. The hip shift you mention is real and the refs still missed the head shot but that is a different post.
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