Many people in the gym overlook the legs, and that’s a shame, because your legs are your locomotor unit and your foundation and you can’t build a strong body without laying the groundwork.
Your legs have essentially three main sections that all need to be trained equally, which means that you have to do lots of work to see appreciable gains in the size and strength department; those sections are — the hamstring, the quadriceps and the calves.
The first and perhaps the most effective leg exercise is the SQUAT (recent studies are now disagreeing, we’ll see sater). Because you are moving your body, as well as the weight through space, when doing squats, you will activate over 200 individual muscles with every rep.
Squats blast your glutes, upper hamstrings and quads like no other exercise, not the leg extension or the leg press. To avoid injury and make the most out of every move in your exercises, it is vital to perform the workouts in correct and proper form.
When done correctly, you will use your hip extensors to get moving off the bottom of the stroke and then the quads will kick in at the top or lock-out portion of the exercise. Keep your shoulder blades collapsed together and your chest out and use your butt to hunt for something to sit on as you descend, stop when your thighs are at or just past parallel and then push through your heels and butt to drive yourself back up. You can vary your foot position to accent adductors or abductors.
Now that I’ve spent all that hot air telling you how to do squats, I’m going to recommend that you don’t do them, here’s why. Turns out the limiting factor on squats is your low back and in that bilateral squat position it’s not as stable as it could be, and therefore, you are more prone to injury there.
Your lumbar spine and S1 vertebrae are locked together and more stable in a one foot forward stance and therefore you can drive more work to your legs that way. So my recommendation is to sack squats in favor of split squats. This is like doing a lunge, but, you don’t come out of the lunge position until you are done with your reps and then you switch legs and do the other side.
This is also the reason it’s more functional, we are designed to walk, and that stance imitates a step. You can do this with barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells, resistance bands, sand bags and TRX suspension straps. I explain more about lunges in a little while. I will post a video on split squats in the near future.
Stretching is a must at the start of every exercise, however, personal experience tells me that stretches before every set are also beneficial.
Since we’re talking about squats, you must include the HACK SQUAT (using the machine) in your routine to bombard not just your quads but your abductors & adductors. Your abductors and adductors are notoriously hard at work, but the Hack Squat really targets them. Positioning of the feet on the platform may also be adjusted to emphasize the workout either on your quads or gluts. A wide stance will emphasize your adductors, narrow will get a little more abductors. Feet forward will get more glutes and feet under you or back further will emphasize quads (careful not to hurt your knees on these).
Another quality leg exercise is the STRAIGHT-LEGGED DEADLIFT. This is a good exercise for keeping your lower back strong and flexible while really working your upperhamstrings and glutes. Once again, collapse your shoulder blades together and stick your chest out.
You want to start with a comfortable, but challenging weight, and perform these by using a mixed grip on the barbell (one hand palm up and the other palm down), then lower the weight while keeping your legs and back straight.
Keep your knees bent a little. Note that the position of your shins must be as close to the bar as possible with your buttocks pushed outward. You’ll want to do a good number of reps, until you feel the burn in your upper hamstrings and glutes.
Another great exercise is the LUNGE. Using proper posture, you must concentrate on your hip extensors, gluteus and upper hamstrings with lunge exercises. When lunges are done with improper posture and bad form the load is thrown onto your knee extensors, your quads.
If you feel that most of the work is concentrated on your quads while doing lunges or deep squats, then it might be best to ask for coaching on the proper posture, otherwise, your knees will give out. It’s very effective when you lunge with a barbell, as it requires you to utilize your balance and stabilizers as you do each rep. You can do lunges with dumbbells, too, but you can’t use as much weight.
Three other great tools to do lunges with are: 1) Resistance bands, you can use the bands for either resistance or assistance. In my humble opinion, these are the ultimate tools for doing lunges, hell, you can use a barbell and use the band at the same time. 2) TRX suspension straps. You can use the bands with this also. 3) Sandbags, due to the shape and ever shifting nature, these require different gripping and/or carrying strategies and more core stabilization. Yes, you can use bands at the same time.
To balance your legs, the calves must also be paid attention to, as it is important to note that honing these muscles will also add inches to your vertical leap.
For calf work, the donkey press is probably the most effective for building size and strength.
Form is critical when performing the Donkey Press, because you need to push all the way up on your toes (plantar flex) – hold it – and then make sure that you really extend your feet at the bottom of each rep (dorsi flex) to ensure a proper stretch of the muscle fibers… this is great, because you don’t need to stretch between sets or afterwards, because you’re getting a great stretch during the exercise.
Try to remember that injuries are possible if you are doing these leg exercises. So proper form and being honest with yourself regarding how much weight you can successfully lift.
