maratoolSplit Jerk
How to do the split jerk
- Standing with the weight racked on the front of the shoulders, begin with the dip. With your feet directly under your hips, flex the knees without moving the hips backward.
- Go down only slightly, and reverse direction as powerfully as possible. Drive through the heels create as much speed and force as possible, and be sure to move your head out of the way as the bar leaves the shoulders. At this moment as the feet leave the floor, the feet must be placed into the receiving position as quickly as possible.
- In the brief moment the feet are not actively driving against the platform, the athlete's effort to push the bar up will drive them down. The feet should be moved to a split stance, one foot forward, one foot back, with the knees partially bent. Receive the bar with the arms locked out overhead.
- Return to a standing position, bringing the feet together.
Muscles worked
The prime movers are the quadriceps across the front of the thigh, which straighten the knee and, just as importantly, control it on the way back down.
Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the glutes finish hip extension; the hamstrings assist hip extension and slow the knee down; the deltoids stabilise the shoulder and add force at the top of the range.
The triceps take a share of the work as well.
Every exercise for:QuadricepsGlutesHamstringsShouldersTriceps
How this movement works
The working muscles shorten as they drive the load away from you, and more than one joint changes angle to do it. Load spreads down a chain instead of sitting on one muscle, which is why a compound push handles more weight than any single-joint alternative — and why joint position, not the muscle, is usually what fails first.
It is filed under olympic weightlifting. The bar must move fast enough for you to get underneath it, which makes this a skill rather than a grind: low repetitions, well short of where fatigue starts editing technique.
What you need
A barbell locks both hands to one bar, so neither side can drift and the load climbs in plate-sized steps. That makes it the simplest way to add weight and the least forgiving thing to bail out of.
Every exercise using:Barbell
These train the quadriceps too, using equipment this one does not:
- Split Jumpbody only
- Split Squat with Dumbbellsdumbbell
- Squats with Exercise Bandsband
- Stairmastermachine
- Cable Deadliftscable
Difficulty
Listed at intermediate level. It assumes you already own the underlying pattern and can hold position under load — if the position breaks before the target muscle tires, drop back to a beginner variation until it does not.
Of the 173 quadriceps exercises in this database, 62 are listed at intermediate level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.