Bulgarian split squat: muscles worked and how to log it

The Bulgarian split squat works the quads of the front leg first, with the glutes and hamstrings of that same leg as secondaries — that is the Zyra Workouts catalog row, and it is the one exercise in this collection that the catalog flags as unilateral. That flag matters for logging, so this guide spends a section on it.

Muscles worked

The front knee bends and straightens (quads); the front hip flexes and extends (glutes, hamstrings). The rear leg is a kickstand — it keeps you balanced and lets the front leg travel through a long range, but it should not be pushing. If you feel the rear thigh working hard, the stance is probably too short.

Setup and execution

1. Bench height. Knee height or a little lower. Higher benches stretch the rear hip and tip the trunk forward; pick one bench and note its height so sets compare.
2. Stance length. Stand a long step in front of the bench, rear foot laces-down on the pad. Too short and the front knee shoots far forward; too long and the rear hip stops you short of depth.
3. Load. A dumbbell in each hand (the catalog row), hanging at the sides. The number you log is the weight of one dumbbell.
4. Descent. Lower straight down until the rear knee is near the floor, trunk leaning slightly forward, front foot flat.
5. Ascent. Push through the whole front foot to stand. Finish all reps on one leg, then switch.

Do the weaker leg first, and let it decide the reps for the stronger leg — that keeps the two lines close together over time.

Logging left and right

The catalog marks the exercise unilateral, and the logger has a switch for it. Tap L/R on the exercise row and every set that has not been completed yet splits into two lines, L and R, seeded with the same weight and reps, each with its own RIR. From then on you fill in each side separately, so a 20 kg × 10 left and a 20 kg × 8 right are recorded as exactly that rather than averaged. Turning L/R off returns the row to single lines.

Two consequences of how the app counts today, stated plainly:

• Volume. The dashboard counts every non-warm-up line as a working set. Three sets per leg are six lines, so they credit 6 sets to quads and 3 each to glutes and hamstrings against the weekly landmarks (quads 14, glutes 10, hamstrings 10). The weekly sets calculator uses the same rule, so enter the number of lines, not the number of "sets".
• Progression. Recommendations pair your last working lines with the targets in order, so the wand on line one looks at your first logged line last time (the left side, if you logged left first). Keeping a fixed side order makes the recommendations mean the same thing week to week.

Rep and RIR targets by goal

Compound exercise, compound table — per side:

The rep ceiling is the number the app compares your last set against: the midpoint of the rep range plus the RIR target (round((min + max) / 2) + RIR). RIR is reps in reserve — how many more reps you could have done. These targets are the app's defaults, not a law; a program you build yourself can set anything. Default rest is 120 s; most people rest a little between sides as well.

How progression steps on this exercise

Dumbbell, so the step is a fixed 2 kg per hand. On the hypertrophy target (6–10 @RIR 2, ceiling 10): 20 kg × 11 → next recommendation 22 kg × 6; 20 kg × 8 → hold 20 kg × 8; 20 kg × 5 → back off to 18 kg × 6. If your dumbbell rack jumps in 2.5 kg, pick the nearest pair and log what you actually held — the app snaps recommendations to the step, not to your rack. This is arithmetic from the progression engine, not a trial result. The 1RM page estimates from a per-hand load.

Alternatives

Same primary muscle (quads), ranked by feasibility, category, equipment:

Note that the reverse lunge does not appear: the catalog files it under glutes, so it is not a same-primary swap.

The short version

Front-leg quads first, glutes and hamstrings behind. Tap L/R and log each side; every line counts as a set. Compound targets per side, 120 s rest, 2 kg per-hand steps. Weaker leg first. Educational overview only — training guidance, not medical advice.