Split Squat

• Try finding your split squat stance by starting at the bottom and making adjustments from there
• Begin with a 90-90 split squat, then lift your back knee, then shift your weight forward

Split squats are among the most valuable exercises for virtually any training goal or experience level. Even so, getting all the pieces of a split squat to line up can be challenging. One key component of the split squat is your stance.

The way most trainees intuitively first go about finding the right stride length for a split squat is to… well, guess. Guess by placing your feet some distance apart, descend toward the bottom, then perhaps make some adjustments. While a little trial and error will probably get you to the right place eventually, I find one method much more effective and intuitive: instead of setting your feet while standing at the top, you can find your stance from the bottom.

Start by dropping to one knee and adjusting your feet so that both knees are at about 90°. The 90-90 split squat variation looks just like this at the bottom – lots of right angles and straight lines. The 90/90 can be a helpful introductory variation for split squats, but many other split squat variations require a deeper bend at the front knee, so this is only our first step. The next step is to straighten your back leg so that your knee is clear of the floor. Finally, shift your weight forward so that the front knee bends more deeply.

Now we’ve arrived at the most important part of this process: hang out in this bottom pose for a little while. Get comfy. Get familiar with how it feels at the bottom of a split squat. You might try making minor adjustments, such as moving your foot slightly forward or backward. Make sure you can keep your balance and get a feel for supporting as much of your weight as you can on your front foot, since that’s the leg we want performing all the work.

One important point to keep in mind is to keep your heel (working foot) firmly planted on the floor at the bottom. When you’re performing a split squat, you want to push through your whole foot, heel included, and you can’t do that if you roll up onto the ball of your foot. How far you can shift forward will depend on your ankle mobility and proportions.

And at long last, now you can try standing up. Keep your heel flat on the floor and push your hips up and back to extend the front leg. And as you return to this bottom position, you can’t simply travel ‘down’. You must let your hips travel forward and down to achieve the same deep knee bend you found from the bottom. I strongly recommend going up and down a few times to ensure you can confidently and consistently find this bottom posture.

This process is only slightly different when using a front foot elevated split squat. For the first step of this process, your bottom posture won’t look like the 90/90 illustration because your front foot is elevated off the ground. That’s okay, though, because the approach is otherwise exactly the same. The key is to experiment with your stance from the bottom. Since so much of a successful split squat depends on this bottom-most position, you might as well start from there when working through the basics. Don’t worry if it doesn’t feel immediately intuitive because the good news is that it becomes more automatic with rehearsal. So let’s get practicing.