HOW TO: SPLIT SQUAT
Today's lower body, knee-dominant movement, we're going to be looking at the split squat.
It's important to work some unilateral movements into your training program. At the end of the day, when we're walking, we're literally balancing on one leg at a time. So it's important to train that movement.
With the split squat, it's not just about what you do, it's how you do the movement. So I'm going to give you an example of how I can change what muscles are firing whilst I do this movement. It's important to consider what muscles we want to fire so that we can do the movement correctly.
What I'm going to do is swing that kettlebell up into the goblet position. Of course, you don't need to use a kettlebell. You can use body weight, or any other external load if you want.
Swing the kettlebell up into the goblet position, then take a step that's slightly larger than a normal walking step and plant the front heel. The back heel will be off the ground, with the weight on the ball of the foot, however, the hips stay square. I want my feet at roughly hip width on both sides here.
Elbows tight, create tension through the upper body as well as the lower body.
Grip. Screw through that front leg. Drive that knee out, then nice and slow, start to lower the back knee down to the ground. Get a light touch then stand tall again, whilst maintaining control and stability.
Watch my front knee. It's nice and stable. What I don't want to do is have that knee moving all over the place. Create that stability: grip, screw, work through that range of movement. Hit your reps on one side, then switch sides.
Now foot position is important. If my feet are too close together, then I start to block myself up.
It's just an uncomfortable position. So give yourself a little bit of room to allow you to hit a good position, through good alignment and good quality movement.
All right, now, check this out. If I'm doing a split squat, if I drive my knee forward, now I'm loading my quads. As I drive back, my quads are loading as knee extensors. This is totally fine if you want to load the quads.
For me, the better option is to "pull" through my hip rather than "push" through the knee, so I can load my hips more. There a more muscles in the hips, as well as more stabilisation requirements, so ideally, I want to target my hips. So now I'm pulling through the hip rather than pushing through the knee.
Think about your posture. I'm thinking about pulling my heel towards my opposite toe.
So further options with the split squat. If you don't have that strength and stability to work through full range of movement, where your back knee is touching the ground, you can grab a PVC pipe or a broomstick, or set yourself up on a rack or something like that. Just focus on controlling it on the way down, the eccentric contraction, or lowering component. Legs do the work. Full range of movement, light touch of that back knee. Then the upper body can assist to pull yourself back up to the start position.
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