As a fitness trainer, I get a lot of questions regarding “What exercises are best for ______” fill in the blank.  Of course one of the most common areas of concern 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  Bulgarian Split Squat.  This exercise is so effective that you’ll pretty much make your body thunder-thigh proof once you master it!

But, WAIT!

Before we get into this, let me be very, very clear – YOU CANNOT SPOT REDUCE; meaning, you cannot train a specific body part and expect to lose fat in that area.  Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way.

If you attend my local boot camp, Look Great at the Lake Boot Camp, or follow me online you’ll know 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 that is hiding those areas that people are having trouble seeing; 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 to creating a body that looks great naked.  It is also important to know that you lose fat in a genetically predetermined way – in other words, like I said earlier, you cannot spot reduce.   You can do all the crunches and “target training” 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, jiggly arms, or the junk in the trunk.

Now, let’s get back to today’s subject: the world’s greatest lower body exercise.  The reality is there is no such thing, but my favorite leg exercises are any sort of lunge variation because I prefer single leg exercise in lieu of their double leg counterparts for a couple important 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 flexibility imbalance between one leg and the other for most people that it’s critical to address one leg at a time to really shore up the weak links from the start.

There are a ton of different lunge variations.  My favorite one is the Bulgarian Split Squat.  Basically, it’s a stationary lunge with the back foot elevated.  To perform the Bulgarian Split Squat:

1. Elevate the back foot on a chair, bench, box, or any other sturdy foot support, usually about 12-18 inches high.
2. Put your front leg well in front of you in order to make sure that your front knee and ankle are lined up. In general, I tell people to exaggerate how far you put your front leg forward so that the front knee is almost slightly behind the ankle as this really helps reduce sheer force on the knees
3. Initiate the exercise by loading the front heel 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.
4. 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 with dumbbells or resistance bands.  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, balance and stability.

See the video below for a complete demo of all of the different variations of the Bulgarian Split Squat:

There are very few exercises, especially ones that can be done at home with little-to-no-weight, that hit the legs as hard as this sucker does.  In particular, it really helps strengthen your vastus medialis muscle, that inner quad muscle that looks like a teardrop, that’s heavily responsible for tracking your patella and keeping your knee caps in line.  So if you have a history of overtraining or patella-femoral issues this exercise is phenomenal for keeping your knees as bulletproof as possible.

Also, what’s great about it too is that 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.  Don’t waste another moment with the useless adductor/abductor machine (a.k.a. the sex machine) and get off your butt and get after it with the world’s best lower body exercise today!

Have Faith & Take Action!

Justin Yule, B.S., CPT

Your friendly neighborhood Chaska and Chanhassen boot camp instructor and online personal trainer.

Burn 9x more fat at a fraction of the cost of other personal training programs.