The split squat is a fantastic exercise for working the glutes and legs.

Essentially, you have your feet set one forward and one back in a lunge position then you stand up and down, without moving your feet.

I normally do this one with a pair of dumbbells...and you can go fairly heavy with it.

However, if you don't have heavy dumbbells, or if you find balance to be an issue with the movement itself, this is a great variation to work with.

The exercise itself is your basic split squat...the only difference is how you're loading the exercise.
In this case, it's the end of the barbell, set on the rails of the power rack.

You rest the fat end of the bar on your shoulder (using a pad or towel is fine if you don't want the bar digging into your traps too much) and you can grab onto the rail with your other hand for stabilization (similar to a Hatfield Squat, if you're familiar with that movement).

Then you just stand up with the load on your shoulder...the bar should rest on the same side shoulder as your front leg (left leg - left shoulder).

For me, I found this resulted in less knee stress than the dumbbell version...it's more stable because the path of the bar is fixed, plus because you can grip with the other hand, it stabilizes your body even more....but not so much that it becomes a "locked in" machine type of exercise that's too rigid.

This hits a happy medium between those things while allowing you to use basically as much weight as you want (useful if you don't have heavy dumbbells).

This setup allows you to really focus on hammering the muscles rather than balancing the load.

In the demo here, I've got 4 plates on the working end and 3 plates on the other end to counterbalance.

Don't have too much of an angle at the bottom when the bar is resting on the rails or the plates will slide off as you're loading and unloading it.

Do your reps on one side then you can either take a rest or go immediately to the other leg.

If you want go a step further, you could potentially also set a bench behind you to put your back leg up on to do Bulgarian Split Squats like this as well.

Check out the video for this one on my YouTube channel here.

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Want more unique exercises like this for home gym training or power rack training?

Check out ten more exercises from "The Best Home Gym Exercises You've Never Heard Of"

And six more from "The Best Power Rack Exercises You've Never Heard Of"

You'll be amazed at what you can do with very simple equipment!

Nick Nilsson
The Mad Scientist of Muscle

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https://www.fitstep.com/2/the-best-home-gym-exercises/index.htm
https://www.fitstep.com/best-power-rack-exercises/
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