My Love Affair with the Bulgarian Split Squat

Throughout my followings of internet gurus, I have met, tried, experimented, visited, believed and argued many different points at different times. Louie Simmons was my first. I subscribed to Powerlifting USA to read his column, bought chains, bands, glute ham machines, reverse hypers and a Westside Barbell T-shirt which he gave me (the dog on the shirt was actually his dog). I spent multiple days at the old pizza shop in a strip mall on Demorest Ave in Columbus. Louie is a great coach, incredibly knowledgeable and a great person. In fact, he is such a great person that he said to me it was time to move on and learn from others because what he does, powerlifting, could only get me to a certain point. I needed new concepts that would get me closer to my goal of developing sprinters. He introduced me to John Davies, and I learned a lot. But I still needed more. I saw Bompa, Verkhoshanky, Siff, Weyand, Schroeder, Poliquin, Pfaff, Seagrave, and others speak on multiple occasions. I was one of the first in the US to have a Nemes vibrating plate sold by the Kraaijenhofs and delved into the Bosco stuff. My success was good but not where I wanted to be. Dan Fichter of wannagetfast, got us connected to DB Hammer who was selling limited consultations; we paid to have questions answered and teach us how to build programs that got great results for high school athletes. DB taught me the importance of the Bulgarian split squat and isometric strength. Thus, my love affair began.

Split Squat Technique Generates Biggest Gains

Test an athlete on a movement that matters—40 yard dash, vertical jump, etc.—create a workout, stay with something for three weeks and remeasure. Repeat with others and see what works.

Along this journey, I have kept data on my athletes. I am a track coach who has access to many athletes with a variety of capabilities, and I have a gym and train athletes in a one on one/small group setting. And with these groups, I have always tried to keep notes, film and results on my athletes because my quest is to find exercises that improve athletic development and more importantly sprinting speed. Test an athlete on a movement that matters—40 yard dash, vertical jump, etc.—create a workout, stay with something for three weeks and remeasure. Repeat with others and see what works. For me, the isometric split squat has been a staple that generates powerful athletes. My fastest guys, 10.5-10.8/100m range have always had the strongest “holds” – that is what we call them – and they all jump between 35 to 40 inch vertical jump.

Figure 1: Hammer Strength Deadlift Machine

The evolution of the exercise for me has been an interesting journey. Holding heavy weight in that position can be difficult, even with the safety squat bar. So, while assembling my gym, I came across a yellow Hammer Strength Deadlift machine on eBay for $200 in Seattle. I won it and paid $400 for shipping, and it changed my gym. It came with a bar installed to put your back foot on, and all we had to do was grab and hold for the allotted 30 sec. The problem was that grip strength became the limiting factor. We added straps, but that didn’t work. We tried a variety of belts, OK for some people. But thanks to iron mind straps and Spud belt-squat belts, we put together a system that is very effective because the weight goes to the lower body and is not limited to upper body strength.

Figure 2: Deadlift Machine with Athlete

The position of the athlete may vary. But, basically, one foot goes forward, and one goes back. The weight should hang along the side of the hip, so the weight doesn’t pull the athlete forward. When the athlete squats into position, the knee moves forward over the second toe, and the hips sink back into a squat position. My cue for the athlete is to think that a rope is pulling your knee forward, and a rope is pulling your hips back to stretch the hamstring. It should look like a chair tipped forward. The athlete should feel the pressure in the glute and hamstring of the forward leg and a stretch in the hip flexors in the rear leg. If an athlete feels it in the lower back or quad, their form is off, or the weight is too much. Some athletes get a more intense contraction going down deeper while others get a better contraction not going down as far or even slightly leaned forward. I think the ankle rocker (knee going forward) is key. Once the ankle breaks 90 degrees, the athlete will get a good glute contraction. Another cue is that the shin should be parallel to the spine. That is the perfect position to get a good hip drive in my opinion. We start with a hold in that position for 30 seconds and continually add weight as we progress. You will be shocked to see how fast people increase weight. After a couple of weeks of the 30 second holds, we progress to the Cal Dietz Triphasic holds, where the athlete drops down fast holds for a three count and powers up. A coach can always change the workout with supersets and giant sets by adding single leg jumps or drops from a box.

Figure 3: Deadlift Machine Sideview

What I have found is that the stronger athletes get at this exercise, the faster they run and the higher they jump. I have had athletes who could squat the house but couldn’t run or even hold their body weight in the position. But, once their body learned the position and strengthened this aspect of their movement, they ran faster and jumped higher. Athletes that start with me who can already run may not be great at some of the traditional lifts but always seemed to do very well in the isometric exercises.

Why do I think this is the case? Isometric strength is responsible for stopping the momentum from an action. So, going down in a vertical jump, there needs to be a strength type to stop the movement going down. Most people are slow to reverse this momentum and lose energy in the concentric portion of the jump. Another way to look at it is that it creates a platform to push from. A rubber ball works great on concrete but not so great on sand.

Figure 4: Athlete demonstrates Bulgarian Split Squats on the kBox. Photo courtesy Exxentric.

My latest excursion takes this concept one step further, inertial training. Or in my case, an Exxentric kBox from Flywheel USA. It is a flywheel concept where one pulls on a cable that is connected to a flywheel. As they pull, the wheel spins. At the end of the strap, the flywheel reverses directions and pulls the strap back to the origin. The key is that the athlete stops the spin and reverses the wheel. By the way, the wheel pulls back harder than the concentric pull. Some people call this eccentric training and it is. But, as I sit and spot on my kBox, I have noted that the more explosive people are the ones who can stop that wheel more quickly than others. Again, they are stopping a momentum, in this case a fast moving cable trying to suck them through a small hole in a 25 pound machine. Even more interesting is that fact that as some of the athletes who are less explosive got stronger in their isometric squats, the better they reversed the wheel and the higher they jumped and the faster they ran. So the combination of these tools has been very effective in training athletes to be more explosive.

This post was expertly written by Chris Korfist

What should I do during my rest periods?

Squeezing in a gym session around work and your weekend hangover is difficult. When you finally find the time you need to make the most of every minute. That means no chatting up the pilates class and absolutely no #gymselfies! It also means putting your rest periods to better use than sitting on the bench, swiping through Tinder

Rest periods should change in length depending on the aim of your session. If you’re storming through a circuit you only have 30-45secs between sets and need all of that to catch your breath. But if you’re doing strength training and your rep range rarely heads above five, you should be taking a full 3mins of rest. If you don’t, your CNS won’t recover and your subsequent lifts will suffer.

But 3min rests in a 45min workout eats into much needed gym time. Not what you want when you’ve already pushed back meetings and re-arranged date night to carve out a free hour. To help improve your workout's efficiency we've picked our perfect filler moves to supplement your exercises and help you become stronger, more flexible and injury proof.

Deadlifts

You would have thought this ultimate strength move required all of your effort, but a bit of extra abs work can bolster your future performance. “Working on anterior (front) core strength will help you maintain a flat back throughout the lift,” says Mans. Perfect form means you lift with the correct muscles and can squeeze out that final rep with ease. Perform 1min of front planks, side planks or deadbugs between each set for a side-order of six-pack abs and an extra 10kg on your PB.

Back squats

You won't pack any power into your lower body if your 'squats' involve little more than a slight bend at the knee “Poor hip flexibility means you’ll struggle squatting to the necessary depth,” says Mans. Loosening your muscles with flexibility exercises between sets increases your range of movement and therefore your lift's efficiency. Do 30secs of kneeling hip flexor stretches and psoas quad stretches during your breaks. Google them and thank us later.

Bench press

To get the most out of your time at the bench you need to work through your 'sticking point' – that reallly difficult phase of the move where the bar is 3-5 inches from your chest. Wall slides are the perfect stretch to open out your chest muscles, boosting your range of movement and helping ease the bar's journey. “Wall slides are essential, especially if you've been sat hunched over in front of a desk all day,” says Mans. Do 15 reps every time you break from the bench. They’ll work wonders for your posture and boost your bragging rights.

Shoulder press

Your shoulder is made up of more muscles than you might think. Shoulder stability exercises work the smaller muscles and are essential for overall strength and avoiding injury. “Try 90 degrees external rotation exercises using a cable machine,” says Mans. Set the pin to a light weight and do around 12 reps on each arm. Popping a weak shoulder at the top of a lift won't just hurt like hell, it'll keep you out of the gym for weeks. Don't forget the little guys.

Why 10 x 3 Is Best for Strength and Size

One of the things that has always stuck in my head as far as training goes is to do the opposite of what most do. Breaking Muscle athlete and super-coach Charles Staley is the guy who said this. It’s a fairly simple concept. If you see people using machines, then do free weights. If you see people doing chest and biceps, then do legs.

But the biggest disconnect usually comes when we talk about volume. Everyone knows typical gym training begins with three sets of ten. There is actually some science behind that. Back in the 1960s, Dr. Thomas DeLorme found that people responded better to multiple sets than they did to a single exposure, both in terms of building muscle size and strength (which explains why high-intensity training doesn’t work long term).

While sets of ten will work to begin with, they do have some limitations, especially for the natural trainee. Sooner or later the decreasing intensity in these sets of ten will have you need to work fewer reps per set. To begin with, a set of ten may leave you out of breath and flushed, but it won’t stay that way. The best way to think about it is like going for a jog. At first it’s difficult to even get around the block, but if you keep running those relaxed runs, you will be covering more and more distance pretty quickly. And at that point the only way to get fitter is to run faster

 

It may seem like a strange analogy, but there are far more similarities than differences between strength and fitness training. Beginners usually find themselves training at around seventy percent of what they are ultimately capable of. In fact, there is even a table to work out how hard you are working based off how many reps per set you are doing called Prilepin’s Table. A single set that is the heaviest thing you can lift once and once only represents 100% of your maximum. Looking at Prilepin’s Table, you’ll see that it goes down and eventually ends up at sets of ten and a corresponding seventy percent effort.

 

One of the things people often lose sight of is how many total reps are in a session. There’s a real reason why top strength coaches record not just weight, but sets and reps in their students’ work, as it helps to calculate the total intensity for the session, and even the training cycle. When you look at successful training plans the majority have one big thing in common - they share a total number of reps between the mid twenties and low thirties.

 

Think about it:

 

• 3 x 10
• 3-4 x 8
• 5 x 5
• 4 x 6
• 6 x 4

 

But there’s one incredibly valuable scheme that is overlooked in these plans, and that is the flip side of the old three sets of ten. What happens when you do ten sets of three? Let’s look at some of the benefits of 10 x 3:

 

• In a lift like the deadlift, where the set up can often be half the battle, this gives a trainee more opportunities to learn how to set up properly.
• Fatigue per set is kept to a minimum, reducing the possibility of injury. It’s rare to hear of people hurting themselves on the first rep of a set, but far more common for people to push hard while fatigued and hurt themselves on the eight, ninth, or tenth rep.
• Instead of thirty reps done at seventy percent intensity, this is thirty reps done at around 85% intensity.

 

This style of training allows for much greater stimulus to be applied to the muscles, which will result in greater strength and hypertrophy along the way. This is a great tool to use with opposing muscle groups and big lifts. Good choices are:

 

• Front squats and Romanian deadlifts
• Front squats and power cleans
• Bench press and chins

 

It can also be used to good effect on its own, and Westside Barbell made the 10x3 workout famous when they started using it for speed work on their Dynamic Effort days. For people who have never tried it, the end result is similar to what Dan John had in mind when detailing the One Lift a Day program. Just know that ten genuinely hard sets of three in a big exercise will take some time to get through, and the rest needed to do all this properly will make what seems like a small workout push out to the hour mark.

 

I’d suggest scheduling no more than two workouts per week for the ten by three sessions and using lower intensity work on the other days. A good sample split would be:

 

• Monday: 10 x 3 front squat and power cleans
• Tuesday: 5 x 5 bench press and chins, 3-4 x 6-8 of another upper-body pair
• Wednesday: Rest or easy cardio
• Thursday: Same as Monday
• Friday: Rest or easy cardio
• Saturday: Same as Tuesday
• Sunday: Rest or easy cardio

 

Give it a try for six weeks and see how fast you grow in size and strength.

8 Common Squatting Mistakes and How to Correct Them For Stronger Squats

Everyone makes mistakes. I make a lot. Everyone squats. (Don’t they?) I squat a lot. Through the combination of these two things, in addition to coaching a lot of squats, I’ve worked out eight common mistakes that limit squatting potential. Thankfully, I’ve also worked out how to correct them. Have a read over this list and see if you recognize any of these mistakes in yourself or others.

Mistake #1: Squatting Too High

If all the Internet memes are to be believed, squatting deep is possibly the meaning of life. While this is not quite true (everyone knows deadlifts are the meaning of life), squatting deep makes a whole load of sense, beyond proving doctors wrong and motivational posters right. I always think of squatting deep as something that is counterintuitive. When you have a heavy weight on your back, the last thing you want to do is to squat deeper with it. However, getting your ass to the grass has a number of direct benefits to you. You can harness the power of your glutes and hamstrings far better. It also puts you in a better position to get your hips directly underneath the bar quickly. Both of these things actually make the squat easier and have direct transfer to Olympic weightlifting (think getting pinned at rock bottom under a heavy clean.)

Mistake #2: Having Pins That Are Too High

Nope, nothing to do with long legs. In fact, this is the opposite. For those of us who are vertically challenged, we need to ensure we don’t challenge ourselves further by working off pins that are set too high on the rack. By the time you’ve gotten onto your tip-toes to get the weight off the rack, you’ll have lost a good deal of the tension you’ve worked so hard to generate. So don’t be lazy. Move the pins to a height that suits you. Slightly too low is better than slightly too high.

Mistake #3: Being Unconfident

One of the cues I use most often, out of both necessity and effectiveness, is “confident hips.” You know the type of squat I’m talking about - the one where there are no glaring technical issues, but the squat still looks unstable and unconfident, particularly on the way down. It can look like the hips are making their way down in an “S” shape, unsure which way they are going. Cueing confidence with the hips allows the squatter to focus on moving one part of the body correctly and confidently. Whichever style of squat you are going for, when you create a confident path with the hips, many other aspects of the squat will tend to fall into place.

Mistake #4: Always Wearing Assistance Gear

I’m the first person to advocate the use of legitimate lifting accessories, such as belts and knee wraps. They can be powerful aids in allowing your whole body to experience the strengthening benefits of heavier squats, while also keeping injury at bay. However, save these accessories for when it matters. Take a belt, as an example. I believe wearing a belt can actually help to teach the lifter to brace hard (rather than lessen the lifter’s ability to create pressure, as is commonly believed). However, I also believe that lifting beltless has great benefits in terms of creating and maintaining pressure and position, too. Get the best of both worlds, and use the belt when it gets heavy. Actually, just before it gets heavy, as using a belt is a skill to be learned just like any other.

Mistake #5: Breathing Incorrectly

I see this mistake take many forms. Two of the most common are taking a breath as you make your way down to the bottom, and taking a breath into your chest as opposed to into your belly.In fact I’ve often seem both together, and I put this down to the fact that taking a breath into your chest has little impact on the lifter in terms of anything else apart from intake of oxygen, so when it’s done doesn’t really matter either. The two fixes are simple. Point one: take a breath into your belly. This works to create intra-abdominal pressure to make your squat safer and more effective. Point two: this breath should be done before you begin this lift, just as you wouldn’t put your belt on after starting your lift. Maximize pressure before you begin your descent.

Mistake #6: Going Too Heavy Too Often

All you badasses out there will disagree I am sure, but yes, there is such thing a squatting too heavy. Actually, I’ve changed my mind. There isn’t such thing as squatting too heavy, as when you do so, you are no longer doing a squat. You’re doing some bastardized version of the lift. If you’re all caved in on a front squat or your back squat looks more like a good morning, then you are risking injury and training crappy movement patterns. Yes, it happens from time to time, but don’t make a habit of training this way or your body will think that is how it should be done.

Mistake #7: Never Failing

Not to be confused with going to heavy too often, this is in fact the concept of not going heavy enough, due to not having the balls to do so fear of getting pinned under a heavy bar. Almost always, as with many things, the fear is worse than the reality, and the only way to overcome it is to experience failure. In this situation, I may choose to take the lifter up to and through a controlled fail, with good spotters and under my watchful coaching eye. More often than not with this type of lifter the mind gives up before the body does. Form remains intact, but the lifter has given up mentally and is unable to make it out of the bottom of the squat. However, I have found a controlled practice of failure helps to alleviate the fear of being stuck, and gets the lifter to start making more aggressive choices with weight selection. If you’ve never failed a squat before (and I’m always surprised how many people haven’t), then consider this as an option.

Mistake #8: Being Too Quick Between Sets

Looking at this from a wider perspective, I can see lots of possible reasons why people don’t rest enough in between sets. The hasty pace of modern day living leaving little time to train, the desire to fit in as much training as humanly possible, and the CrossFit mentality of doing everything quickly are three potential reasons why I figure I often see squat sets performed back to back (there’s a pun in there somewhere). But to not allow adequate rest is to short-change yourself from strength gains. Allowing full recovery, or as close as possible, in between squat sets is going to ensure that you get the best out of every set. And before you tell me you don’t need the rest, that you are fine without it, have you ever tried it? I bet that not only could you lift heavier across more sets, but also the quality of your reps would improve, too. Rest more, lift more.