Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
Both training methods made athletes jump higher and turn faster, but didn’t make them run straight-line sprints any faster.
Quantitative
Single-leg lunges helped athletes slow down better with their weaker leg after turning, more than double-leg squats did.
Both types of training made athletes stronger and more powerful, but squats with both legs made them significantly more powerful in the squat than lunges did.
Doing squats with both legs on a special machine for six weeks made the outer thigh and outer calf muscles grow more than doing single-leg lunges.
Doing single-leg lunges with a special machine for six weeks made the inner thigh and inner knee muscles grow more than doing regular squats with both legs.
How much your butt muscles 'fire up' during your first hip thrust or squat doesn’t tell you how much they’ll grow over time — the feeling during the workout isn’t a reliable guide to results.
Causal
Doing squats or hip thrusts helps you get stronger at deadlifts and pushing against a wall about the same amount — neither exercise gives you a big edge over the other for these other movements.
If you want to get stronger at squats, you need to squat; if you want to get stronger at hip thrusts, you need to do hip thrusts. Training one doesn’t make you much stronger at the other.
Squats build your thigh muscles (quads and inner thighs) more than hip thrusts do, because squats involve more knee and hip movement that engages those muscles more.
Doing hip thrusts or squats for 9 weeks with the same total work builds your butt muscles just as much, even though hip thrusts feel like they work your butt harder during the exercise.
BFR training doesn't make you stronger at lifting your heaviest weight — it helps with endurance and muscle size, but not with max strength tests like a one-rep max.
When you do BFR training, your muscles grow more in the middle and lower parts of your thigh than near your hip — meaning the effect is strongest where the blood flow is most restricted.
New lifters of all ages and genders get stronger faster with heavy weights than with light weights and blood flow restriction — no matter how long they train or whether they're male or female.
For most people, lifting light weights with blood flow restriction builds muscle just as well as lifting heavy weights — making it a great option if you can't lift heavy.
If you're new to lifting weights, heavy lifting makes you stronger faster than light lifting with blood flow restriction, but both methods build muscle about the same.
People who already lift weights regularly get stronger and build more muscle from low-weight exercises with blood flow restriction than from heavy lifting, making BFR-RT a powerful tool for advanced athletes.
Training one leg at a time makes that leg much stronger than training both legs together — even though both methods make you equally strong when using both legs at once.
Even though the players got stronger, their ability to jump higher or more powerfully didn’t improve after five weeks of leg press training — meaning strength on the machine doesn’t automatically make you jump better.
Even though the players got stronger from doing leg presses, they didn’t run any faster after five weeks — meaning just getting stronger on a machine doesn’t automatically make you sprint better.
When teenage rugby players train one leg at a time on the leg press machine, they get much stronger in that single leg than when they train both legs together at the same time.
Doing leg press exercises twice a week for five weeks makes teenage rugby players much stronger when pushing with both legs at once, whether they use one leg or both legs at a time.
By adjusting the weight based on how close you are to failure (RIR), both types of sets end up using about the same weight—even though cluster sets seem like they should let you lift heavier.
Mechanistic
If you’re already experienced with weightlifting, doing either kind of set—short breaks or long continuous sets—will make your muscles grow, as long as you’re working hard and doing the same total amount of work.
When muscles get bigger from lifting weights, the way we measure it (ultrasound vs. body scan) doesn’t always line up—so they might be capturing different kinds of changes, not just muscle growth.
Correlational