Who Wants Sexy Legs?

I get a lot of questions regarding "What exercises are best for the thighs and glutes or more commonly referred to as your "butt".

Today I'm going to share my personal favorite lower body exercise and all of its awesome variations. It's called the Rear-Foot Elevated Lunge Variation (aka Bulgarian Split Squat). This exercise is so effective it makes me wonder why more people don't already know about it and use it.

Before we go any further, one thing I definitely don't want to do is mislead you with the idea that individual body part training will lead to spot reduction on certain areas of the body. I am a firm 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, boost metabolism, and promote total body fat-burning in order to effectively eliminate the fat that is hiding those areas that people are having trouble seeing. Yes, the stubborn fat areas that prevent a good body from becoming a great body.

Combine this with a diet high in lean protein, fiber, and green veggies and low in unnatural fats, refined sugars and starches is a pre-requisite if you want to see your muscle's shape and definition.

It is also important to know that you lose fat in a genetically predetermined way. You can do all the crunches 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" so-to-speak.

My favorite leg exercises are any sort of lunge variation. I prefer single-leg exercise over of their double-leg counterparts for several 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, there's often 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 sure up the weak links from the start.



What makes the rear foot elevated lunge different is that we are going to elevate the back foot on a chair, bench, box, or any other sturdy foot support, usually about 12-18 inches high. Using a stability ball as pictured here requires more stabilizing muscles to activate, so this version requires a higher degree of skill and balance.

Begin by putting 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. 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 "tall" up top with a proud chest and shoulders down and back. Finish the rep by dynamically 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 dumbbells. 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
and single-leg balance and stability.

I have yet to find an exercise that hits the legs as hard as this one does. In particular, it really helps strengthen the vastus medialis muscle, which is 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 over training or patella-femoral issues this exercise is phenomenal for keeping your knees as bulletproof as possible.

Also, what's great about the rear foot elevated lunge 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 leg machines, and get off your butt and crank it with the world's best lower body exercise!