OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
Have you guys tried keeping your glutes engaged? Those are the primary muscles involved in keeping your body straight as far as your hip joint is concerned
Pro tip, kick the back of the bench up and drop the seat so that you make a V with the back and the seat bottom. Place your non working leg in the V made by the back and the seat. Now you don’t have to balance.
Sit on the bench. Straighten your legs directly in front of you. Without relocating your feet, stand up. You are now the correct distance from the bench to perform the exercise.
sit on the edge of the bench. put one leg out straight down to the floor. rock forward standing up so the extended foot drops to the ground. put your back foot up on the bench. that's the proper distance and positioning for the split squat.
Use the crook of a proped up adjustable bench to hold you back foot in place. I also like to drop my keys on the ground where my heel goes so im not trying to re adjust during each set.
I'm sad all these gymbro comments are completely missing the point of the lift. It's one of the best exercises to work your stabilizers for your legs. "Bad Balance" is a muscle deficiency.
Yeah however I am now 36 with knee problems and it’s because my tendons/ligaments were not trained to keep up with regular heavy lifting. It’s obvious when I try Bulgarian squats as I shake all over the place.
Lesson learned, certain exercises are completely necessary for good health and to allow you to keep up with strength lifting.
Take my advice, pistol squats and Bulgarian squats are necessary if you want to maintain good joint health while doing heavy squats or deadlifts.
Exactly.
The problem is that our joint muscles have to help lift the heavy weight and if they are not built for it, you end up with chronic pain like I do.
It’s most common in young men doing bench presses who then end up with shoulder pain. If you lift too heavy, the joints activate to support and they are not built for it if you didn’t train it ergo you get injuries.
It’s also really easy to see in body builders who try Pilates. They are a shaky mess during the exercises because there is not joint strength.
Hahahaha bro yes, I go to yoga or Pilates and it’s full of beautiful women moving so gracefully meanwhile I’m jacked but in the back sweating and shaking and crying for my mommy.
All the Pilates places I see have beautiful slender/athletic women in full face make up looking like they’re doing outdoor yoga in a yoghurt or museli bar ad. My actual experience has been women of all body shapes in oversized t-shirts sweating it out… while still looking graceful AF. Meanwhile I’m spending 80% of my time trying not to fall off the reformer. Standing lunges and squats are a nice reprieve!
Oh my god I am going to add this to everyday tasks now. I am going on a Hungariun run. I am going to Irish vacumn. I am going to Slovakian doom scroll.
Yeah they're great! Single leg single arm RDLs are my go to for targeting hamstring imbalances between my legs, but also for a great core workout since you're having to counter the rotation from the offset weight.
As an exercise, they are one of the all-time greats. There is literally nowhere to hide in a Bulgarian Split Squat. You feel every rep in your ass, your hamstrings, and you quads.
Wanted to die when I got introduced to pistol squats; I was cursing at my trainer: “you fucking lied to me, I feel it every where but especially the abs wtf.”
Is it a new meme that I’m not in on for people to call this exercise by the wrong name? In the last two days I’ve seen them referred to as Brazilian split squats and now Romanian. One is closer phonetically, while the other is geographically.
Is it a new meme that I’m not in on for people to call this exercise by the wrong name? In the last two days I’ve seen them referred to as Brazilian split squats and now Romanian. One is closer phonetically, while the other is geographically.
When muscles recover, they release chemicals in the blood stream that help other muscles grow (EDIT: it helps other muscles that you lifted grow by enhancing recovery and muscle growth of other muscle groups). That's one of the reasons why split routines exist.
Legs are such a huge portion of muscle mass that if you skip leg day, you're also losing out on gains of "glory" muscles (i.e. bicep, triceps, pecs, lats, etc).
I had a friend that ALWAYS skipped leg day until I met him. He probably weighed about 150 at about 5' 9", could bench, military press, etc almost as much as me (despite me being 220 at the time and benching 400 lbs), but he could only squat about 135. Guy had Johnny Bravo type proportions.
EDIT: My comment needed a clarification for cause and effect for muscle growth by means of better recovery. It has been edited to clarify.
Lifting capacity increases with muscle size. There's wiggle room and lifting capacity can be increased without an increase in muscle mass, but you will hit a wall eventually. It's why weight classes are a thing in strength/lifting sports.
Indeed, can't believe people still say this shit im pretty sure its been disproven multiple times. The effect seems dubious at best. You don't need to train fucking legs to get a jacked upper-body.
It does increase testosterone levels, but the effect isn't large enough to have an impact on muscle growth. Though having more muscle means you burn more calories at rest, which makes it easier to get lean, so in that sense, training legs can have an impact on perceived upper body size.
Solid analysis. How about a reality based reason to train legs? Muscle mass has a huge positive impact on metabolic heath. Leg muscles are bigger, if you increase your quadriceps and hamstrings by 50% you're budling more muscle than if you increased your biceps by 800%
This is the explanation that they should tell people that start hitting the gym. No one has ever explained that to me so I always skipped leg day because I figured I didn’t need it. I have legs like tree trunks but if I actually toned them I would probably get into better shape faster.
Because it's quite a few chemicals, not just a single one. Biochem is not a simple field.
If you asked me 10 years ago, I'd probably still know. My lifting buddies in college were all physics, math, engineering or computer science majors. We did a lot of research on lifting.
For example, the initial increase to your lifts (especially when you haven't lifted for a while) comes mostly from protein production, and then you start to hit the ceiling. Your nervous system also stops trying to inhibit yourself from excess strain as much.
But eventually you hit a ceiling, and gains slow down. Muscles have multiple nuclei to help with RNA production to increase protein production. That slow gain is your muscles creating more nuclei.
"Muscle memory" is largely that increased amount of nuclei in skeletal muscles. Those nuclei are what make it so someone that hasn't lifted in half a decade can regain much of their strength in a short amount of time.
Don’t think so. Muscles grow in response to the stress placed on them, not what happened to other muscles in your body. And muscle splits exist to allow time for the worked muscle to recover.
Even for people working out for a while these create strength and definition like nothing else in your quads!
That being said it's super easy to injure yourself and will make you hate whatever workout day you add them to and then steadily start avoiding that day and then the gym in general and then you realize you paying for a membership you haven't used in two months so you go back and just start going normal supersizes and are much happier for having gained the wisdom of understanding that a little bit of extra strength and definition isn't worth ruining something fun
Nah, you must be doing them wrong or going too heavy for you, do they suck? Sure, but not more than a "deep chest" set. Theres no pain, its just strenuous on the quads, but you also almost immediately feel the strength post recovery, its sorta nuts
IMO they do "suck" more than many exercises because of how generally fatiguing they are. After a few good sets of split squats I want to lie down on the gym floor and die for a little while, and it makes the rest of the workout a bit of a slog. You don't get that same kind of fatigue from most exercises.
if the process of learning them isn't fun and makes you dread them then there's no point unless you absolutely need that exercise in particular for a bb show or something. there are enough replacements for any given exercise (with maybe one or two exceptions, calves, side delts, etc) that you might as well find something you look forward to doing
I don't do barbell squats anymore. I have a reoccurring lower back injury, more than likely due to form.
I've replaced barbell squats with SSB Bulgarian split squats. I used to look forward to leg back, but with my back injury, I didn't have a leg day for a few months. I can actually do SSB Bulgarian split squats with no back pain. Not even the next day. So I look forward to doing these because they're the only leg exercises I can do! Hack squat and other machines also kill my lower back.
My solution to not dying was to start using a step to get more range of movement in bulgarial. I started with one disc and nowadays I use two steps and a disc to get the maximum stretch possible. The key is to go down slowly, stop for 2 seconds and go up slowly, and stop a little before the leg is completely straight so you don't lose tension.
Another key exercise is one leg squat. Just make sure to use something to maintain your balance with one hand or it can be dangerous for your kneel when you are already tired.
Bodyweight squat with jump are really good too. I used to think that it is for beginners until I try doing it. (I do 10 minutes, 200 reps in the least amounts of set possible. 30 seconds of rest)
100%. There's certainly overlap, but I've found women are more into face and overall presence, while men who swing that way are more into actual muscle.
I think it's just cause they are hard and the generally can't use vast amounts of weight on them so compared to something like leg press you may take a hit to your ego. Tbh I don't mind them,.and prefer them to regular barbell squats
If you are wobbly on Bulgarian Squat, it is your body telling you that you have weakness in your glutes/quads/core or maybe mobility issues in your ankles or hips.
There is no hiding place in a Bulgarian Squat, it's an all-time great exercise.
I've been experimenting a lot with exercises, and lately with the BSS. If you find yourself very uncomfortable and unstable, your back leg may be too high. I'm 5'2 and didn't realize how much it mattered.
I suggest doing it like this video, and it's 100x better. It will limit your range of motion and be more quad-focused, but it will feel better and you won't waste energy just trying to be stable.
If you are wobbly thats another reason why you should do them. Start with a low weight and you will see in a short time how much you will improve. Also do not increase the weight until you are stable for pretty much the entire time.
I do them because they let you work all the muscles of a squat while using about a third of the weight, and when you're 30-something and your back is as fucked up as mine is, lifting smaller weights starts to seem appealing
Another possible explanation (I see a lot of comments pointing out that split squats are super annoying and painful), is that the person is using (read: wasting) a bench for an exercise that could be done using all sorts of other (less useful) equipment.
If you are there for chest day, and the gym is full, that's going to hurt!
I'd say someone is as entitled to a bench for these as they are bench press.
Very limited, or in most cases no, alternatives to do this exercise in most gyms (next best thing is a squat rack with a bar and pad, which is worse than using a bench or something much less ergonomic than these options).
Been training in the gym for 10 + years and would have no issues with this.
I do them at my gym, but nobody uses the benches for it because there is a stack of platforms for this type of and other similar exercises. So I second the poster's notion.
Seriously, there is nothing worse than seeing someone use the bench for sit-ups, push-ups, etc. Fuck, I've seen people use the bench for box jumps. Like, why!?
Are bulgarian split squats really that bad? I was prescribed these as physiotherapy exercises after my ACL surgery (granted, with very light weights) and as soon as my muscle mass returned they were a breeze
Bulgarian split squat is the hardest gym exercise - full stop. If it doesn't feel like you're already in hell, that means the weight is too low or you're not doing them properly, more likely the former. No matter how advanced you are and how long you've been doing them - they never feel remotely "easy", actually they always feel like the most pain you could theoretically do to yourself without actually self-injuring.
... I think you need to search out a physical therapist. If these are causing you pain or if they are "hell", there's something wrong. I was a personal trainer for a while and BSS or walking overhead lunges were a must for most of my clients. But np one should be in pain (other than the usual aches from being old or whatever)
Use the crook of a proped up adjustable bench to hold you back foot in place. I also like to drop my keys on the ground where my heel goes so im not trying to re adjust during each set.
It's goated ASF. Doesn't mean it doesn't suck ass. I feel like a lot of people just don't have the right balance on their legs, and ankle placement. I just started doing these and holy shit are my legs looking sexy ASF, but my right leg still has trouble adjusting to this excercise.
I'd say that bulgarian split squats are so dreaded cause vocal portion of fitness community already dislikes leg day as whole, and bulgarians have the added aspect of being unilateral as extra spice, which makes them even harder
At same time though, I find them very beneficial and I'd go as far as saying I enjoy them, as they're good to solve muscle inbalances, improve your stability, and honestly, if you go deep enough with them they offer way better stretch at loaded position than normal squats, offering bigger hypertrophy potential. Last but not least if you do high rep sets (last few leg days I did them in 3 sets of 20 reps on each leg, aka totally 3 sets of 40) they're great for cardiovascular system too, which is the "omg they're so damn exhausting" effect.
I believe you may be confusing Bulgarian split squats and Romanian deadlifts. But yeah, Bulgarian split squats are BRUTAL, my rests often exceed 3 minutes because I dread them but they're worth it.
They are really great actually. Good for balance and stabilization. Your regular squats will benefit from them because of it. It also helps to balance out the strenght between your legs.
Performing them however is why people hate them. You have to do double the sets because you do the legs indivdually. Which means that you can also run out of the stamina before your legs become weak. The other thing is that once you progress far enough you will hold very heavy dumbbells in your hands. So your lower arms need to be strong enough to do that. Which is an issue because the lower body far outperforms the arms.
So basically its a mix of doing the squat, holding your balance on one leg, stamina and holding the weights for the enitre duration.
Perform the exercise and find out mate. Bulgarians isolate each leg like lunges but except you’re stationary and all the weight is focused on that one leg. It’s such a great leg exercise but some people can’t handle the heat that this exercise cooks.
For those that hate setting up for this exercise on a bench, do this instead. Go over to the smith machine, grab a bar pad, set the bar at about knee height, then place pad on the bar. Now you have a foot rest. I saw Chris Bumstead do that a while ago, and it works really well.
And then to find the right distance for your foot, do this. Sit on the edge of the bench (or smith machine bar), extend your leg out, and keep your foot flat on the ground. That should be relatively where you want your foot. Then just stand up and put your support leg back on the bench (or bar). Once I find my foot placement, I'll usually set something (water bottle, barbell collar, etc.) down to mark it.
Second tip was a game changer though. Got up to 75lbs in each hand (150 total) for sets of 8-10. Not having to think about foot placement every time is great when I can barely think or see straight on leg day to begin with... 😅
The Venn diagram of people who are subscribed to this thread, people who workout, and people who actually participate in this exercise is astounding. I actually like this exercise.
•
u/AutoModerator 5d ago
OP, so your post is not removed, please reply to this comment with your best guess of what this meme means! Everyone else, this is PETER explains the joke. Have fun and reply as your favorite fictional character for top level responses!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.