reckonerRear-foot-elevated split squat
A split squat with the back foot up on a bench. Raising it takes the back leg out of the equation almost entirely, so the front leg carries more of you through a longer range. It is one of the hardest things you can do with a pair of light dumbbells.
Drop straight down over the front foot.
- Pattern
- Lunge
- Trains
- Quads, glutes
- Kit
- Dumbbell, bench
- Loading
- A weight you choose
- Reckoner prescribes
- 4 sets of 6 to 10 reps at RPE 8
- Progression step
- 2 kg once the top of the range is clean
- Skill
- Technical
- Recovery cost
- High
- Not prescribed if you have declared
- Knee, hip
Muscles worked
How to do it
Set the bench and find your stance
A bench at about knee height. Put the top of the back foot on it, or the toes if that is more comfortable, then hop the front foot forward until both knees can reach a right angle at the bottom. Get this right before you add weight.
Take the dumbbells and stand tall
One in each hand, arms hanging. Square your hips and shoulders to the front. A twist here shows up as a wobble at the bottom.
Drop straight down over the front foot
That is the cue on your wrist. Your weight goes down through the front leg, and the back leg comes along for the ride. Keep the front foot flat and the torso upright or leaned very slightly forward.
Drive up through the front heel
Stand up on the front leg. All the reps on one side, then set up again for the other. Setting up twice is part of the exercise, and skipping it is how the second side gets shortchanged.
What goes wrong
Setting the stance too short
Too short and the front knee is jammed forward at the bottom and the front hip is being stretched by the bench rather than loaded by the weight. Hop the front foot forward until the bottom position feels like a squat rather than a stretch.
Believing it is harder on your knees than a squat
It feels more intense and that is not the same as more knee load. Twenty resistance-trained men were measured through this lift and a back squat, and the elevated split squat put significantly less demand and about nine degrees less bend through the knee, low enough that the knee's demand fell below the ankle's1. Both are hip dominant. This one is more so.
Loading it before you can balance it
The limiting factor at the start is almost never leg strength, it is holding a narrow base steady over one foot. If the last rep of a set wanders and the first one did not, the dumbbells are ahead of your control, and the record you are building is of a movement that changed halfway through.
How Reckoner progresses this lift
Six weeks of this lift, from 16 kg, run through the real engine. Nothing below was typed in: the prescription, the decision and the sentence beside it all come from the same code that writes your week.
| Week | Prescribed | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 x 6 at 16 kg | More reps 6 → 7 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 2 | 4 x 7 at 16 kg | More reps 7 → 8 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 3 | 4 x 8 at 16 kg | More reps 8 → 9 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 4 | 4 x 9 at 16 kg | More reps 9 → 10 repsYou finished every set at RPE 7, with room left in the range, so the reps climb before the load does. |
| 5 | 4 x 10 at 16 kg | Deload 40% of sets offFive weeks of building, then one week lighter. About 40% of the sets come off. The load holds and your reps stay where you earned them, so you keep the strength and lose the fatigue. |
| 6 | 2 x 10 at 16 kg | Load up 16 kg → 18 kgYou hit the top of the range at RPE 7, so the bar goes up 2 kg to 18 kg and reps reset to six. The lighter week is over, so this is back to four sets. |
Real engine output, not an illustration. Every row was produced by running the engine itself when this page was generated.
The full rule, and why the reps move before the load does, is in how Reckoner decides to add weight.
Questions people ask
How high should the bench be?
About knee height for most people. Higher tips you forward and turns it into something your hip flexors are fighting. Lower makes it a split squat with a slightly raised foot, which is fine and is a reasonable place to start.
Should I hold the dumbbells or use a barbell?
Dumbbells. Reckoner records this as a dumbbell movement and progresses it on the dumbbell ladder, and a bar on your back over a base this narrow buys nothing except a harder thing to bail out of.
Will Reckoner give me this with a knee restriction?
No. Knee and hip are both recorded against it. Declare either in setup and it comes out of your plan, even though the measured knee demand is lower than a squat's, because the library records the restriction against the movement rather than against the measurement.
Similar movements
Reckoner eases the load first when this lift stalls, and offers one of these only if it stalls again after that. A lift already as light as your kit goes has no load left to ease, so the offer comes straight away. Each of them has a page.
Sources
- Mackey and Riemann, International Journal of Exercise Science, 2021. Biomechanical Differences Between the Bulgarian Split-Squat and Back Squat twenty resistance-trained men measured through both lifts, both being hip dominant, and the rear-foot-elevated split squat placing significantly less demand and about nine degrees less flexion on the knee than the back squat, to the point that its knee demand fell below its ankle demand