08/24/2026
Tall people probably shouldn’t squat exactly like short people.
And they probably shouldn’t do all of their single-leg work the same way either.
If you’re 6’+ with relatively long femurs, your squat will often naturally involve more forward trunk lean and more hip contribution. That isn’t a bad squat. It’s often just the strategy that makes sense for the levers you were given. Trying to force everybody into the same perfectly upright squat ignores the fact that limb proportions and available joint motion help determine how we solve the movement. (Straub & Powers, 2024.)
But programming is more than deciding whether a movement looks “good.”
If my bilateral squat is already relatively hip dominant, I don’t necessarily need every accessory exercise to hammer the exact same strategy. I can use my single-leg work to deliberately bias more knee flexion and quad.
That’s what I’m doing with this Bulgarian split squat.
Instead of sitting DOWN and BACK with a bunch of trunk lean, I’m keeping the torso more upright, letting the front knee travel forward and putting the front foot on a squat wedge. Heel elevation consistently increases knee ROM during squatting, and the newest systematic review/meta-analysis found roughly 5° more knee ROM overall with heel elevation. (Aminiaghdam et al., 2026.)
That gives me a Bulgarian that looks and functions very differently from the more hip-dominant version. We also have direct BSS data showing that changing trunk position changes muscular demands, with greater trunk flexion increasing posterior-chain activation. (Aygun-Polat et al., 2025.)
This is the part of programming that gets missed.
Exercises aren’t inherently “quad exercises” or “glute exercises.” How you perform them matters. Your anatomy matters. Your other training matters.
Don’t force the person to fit the exercise.
Make the exercise fit the person.
trainer
