Are Bulgarian Squats a great exercise for sprinters?
why I think it might be;
-Trains the stabilizing muscles around the hip.
-Trains the glute and hamstrings so the athelte dont get quad dominant
-Improves balance
-Increase 1 legged strength which is important since running is a one legged strength exercise.
-Safe exercise compared to regular squats.
Agree? Disagree?
On the contrary, I think Bulgarian squats quite quad dominant, much more than other exercises involving hip and knee extension like squats, lunges, snatch, clean. Don’t like the way the rear leg is working either.
But hey, that’s just my opinion. Do whatever you feel is right.
I do them two ways, longer step and shorter step - I do lunges the same. That being said we only do them for 4 weeks in total.
I do body weight only during running circuits - ie, run 100m, B.s. then run again right away. I find them good to stretch out the hip flexors and rec fem. Haha, 1st few times trying to run after doing them, or split squats… lol - like watching a drunk a guy trying to run… After only a few times, you stretch out them buggers and running no longer feels an issue afterwards. Which is why i like them - keep the issues away.
They are useless. All of those things can be accomplished without them, and they are probably lower in specificty with respect to sprinting than the squat.
You could mainly look at them(bulgarian split squats), depending on how you execute them, as a prehab/rehab exercise for all the joints involved…right from the great toe joint all the way up to the hips and low back. Because basically its working those joints in an ‘instantaneous axis of rotation’ manner. Think of it as if you’re moving up and backward as opposed to up and forward, which may reduce the severity of the pattern overload(in terms of muscle imbalances) of always moving forward.