Chicken legs

Almost everyone has a favorite muscle group they like to train and develop best. For most of the new or young builders this is the biceps/arms. Why is this, probably because strong arms and especially the flexed biceps is the summum of showing your strength. On the other hand, most people also have a muscle group they don’t like to train. And mostly that is legs.

Developing oak tree legs asks a lot of dedication and hard work. Training the legs wears you out and is often very painful, moreover most people don’t consider muscular legs as "sexy" as the biceps. They are often covered up and no eye catcher as fully pumped arms.

Legs often don’t react as quickly on training as other muscle groups they demand much more time consuming efforts. That’s why many people avoid them and then blame their lagging leg muscles on the fact that they don’t have the “right genetics” and that they “don’t respond well on the heavy squatting.”

Let’s make one thing clear, if you don’t train all bodyparts or train the lagging bodyparts extra, you will create a misbalance. That doesn’t look exactly nice now, does it?

So this blogpost is to those who do not train legs AT ALL!! Just because one day training legs is a day of biceps curls missed! But I bet that girls must be turned off by someone who has huge arms and shoulders yet legs like a 12 year old boy!

If you look back at many of the bodybuilders from a few decades ago, most of them had relatively skinny legs compared to today’s bodybuilders. Since the 80's we see an increased growth of legs and backs. Today bodybuilders try to get as big as possible. The chemical warfare needed to achieve such freakish size attracts less people. I already posted on the female bodybuilding that lost track. Also about Men’s Physique that is growing on the costs of bodybuilding. While the IFBB is still preferring raw mass over aesthetics and symmetry, the public is changing opinion.

I would like to show you how two very different legendary bodybuilders competed through these changing ideal proportions. Tom Platz and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

First Tom Platz, most people on the fora claim that he is genetically predispositioned to have impressive leg development, you can see on the picture that the young Tom Platz started with a pair of thin legs. On the same comparison picture you see him next the “The Hulk” Lou Ferringo, and you can clearly see the difference in thigh circumference. Lou later developed a much better pair of legs. But I think this shows how the concept of “ideal body proportions” changed.

The muscular development of Tom Platz's legs were way ahead of his times! Yes, he is known to most bodybuilding and strength training fans for having the best leg development of all time. He competed as a bodybuilder in the 70's and retired in 1987, before making a "comeback" in 1995. Yet when you look at his legs and compare them to the other bodybuilders of his time, including the great Arnold, you cannot help but conclude that he was way ahead of the rest. In fact I would say that it was not till the 90's that there were bodybuilders who could compete with his level of leg development.

As a bodybuilder his greatest achievement was placing 3rd in the 1981 Mr.Olympia, but he was far more popular than many others who may have been more "successful" than him on stage. And for squat lovers, he is truly a god! I mean even today, guys would kill to get legs like him.

So what was the secret of his leg development? If you know anything about training legs, then you would have correctly guessed it, intense squatting. How intense? How about 405 pounds for 30+ reps, or 600 pounds for 15 reps? As extreme and hardcore as it may sound, there is no other way to have that kind of leg development without intense squatting. Yep, those 1000 pound leg presses won’t get you there, nor will those silly sissy squats. In this post I will share with you his intense squat workout, how he prepared for it, and how you can adapt it for your own training. See the pic below the intensity …PAIN IS GAIN!!...

To begin with I would like to mention that I came across this workout in the July 2002 edition of the UK issue of MuscleMag. In this issue Tom wrote an article in which he described his workout and how he went about it. He used to squat once every 14 days, and no more than twice a month. One session was done with 405 for 30+ reps, and the other with 600 for 15 reps. After that he would train hamstrings and calves. Besides these two squat workouts he also trained legs on two other days in a month, where he did leg extensions and/or hack squats, plus trained the hamstrings and calves.

For Tom, squats was much more than a simple exercise. He would mentally start visualizing and preparing for the squat workout 2 weeks in advance, so that meant after finishing one intense squat session, he would start thinking about the next one about an hour or so later when he would have his meal of tuna and steamed rice with raisins. For him the squat rack was like a spiritual place, much like a church.

While Tom certainly was genetically gifted he also trained his legs like an animal. His weapon of choice? Heavy, high rep squats. I realize that that’s an oxymoron – how can you go heavy and still do high reps? Well, here’s Tom squatting 500 lbs for 23 reps in 60 seconds and smiling.

The workout routine they used was a high-volume approach. In layman’s terms ‘high volume’ means they did a whole lot of work to achieve their physiques. Both in the gym and in the “kitchen”. In the book "Arnold's Encyclopedia of bodybuilding". Arnold says: “Tom Platz was the hardest trainer. He used to do heavy squads and then just after his leg workout, he used to cycle 10 miles.”

•Firstly if your roided up, then TRAIN LEGS!! I can’t say how many times I have seen men with huge respectable upper bodies yet have no legs whatsoever! Not due to genetics or high calf insertions but just due to neglect.

•Secondly ditch all the isolation crap and the knee bend ‘squats’, GET DEEP! Nothing stimulates leg growth quite like a full depth barbell back squat according to EMG tests.

•Mobility, if you can’t squat down with your hip joint past parallel then you have no chance! The most basic position we should be able to feel comfortable in is a full depth ‘baby style’ squat. This is something life and our jobs actually un-teach us!

•Do not skip leg day because you play football!!! WHERE IS THE LOGIC?? Do you skip shoulders if you work in a call-center all day?

Arnold Schwarzenegger was a promising young bodybuilder who had one glaring weakness (seriously)—his legs. At 6'2", Arnold knew firsthand the difficulty tall bodybuilders face in bringing up their bottom halves. Rather than accepting this shortcoming, however, Arnold endured grueling, even sickening, workouts up to three times a week to build massive tree-trunk thighs worthy of someone nicknamed The Oak.

While Arnold did conventional exercises, his training approach was anything but. He approached leg days with an extraordinary tolerance for pain and dedication to push his body past its physical limits. While anyone can repeat the exercises that he uses in his routine, few can duplicate his legs-into-Jell-O intensity. But we’re guessing at least a few of you have the cojones to give it a try.

Back in the early 1960s, when Arnold Schwarzenegger began his competitive bodybuilding career, his calves were virtually nonexistent. At the time, calf development was not top priority in the sport, especially in Europe. Consequently, he, like most of his fellow Austrian bodybuilders, neglected to train them.

Then, in 1966, 19-year-old Schwarzenegger entered his first international competition, the Mr. Universe, and he learned the hard way that there’s more to bodybuilding than training the upper body. America’s Chet Yorton also competed in that show and handed The Oak his first major defeat. Yorton’s physique exemplified the emerging ideal of a holistic approach to bodybuilding one in which no body part is favored over another. True to his principles, Yorton had developed a sterling pair of diamond-shaped calves atop which could be found the rest of his equally chiseled physique.

On the picture you can see Chet pointing to his calves and to Arnold.

The hypercompetitive Schwarzenegger didn’t like to lose and decided then and there that his calves would never hold back his bodybuilding aspirations again. He dedicated himself to building the biggest, most impressive pair of calves around, whatever it took. He cut all of his training sweatpants at the knees to constantly remind him they needed his attention, as they did their best to detract from what was otherwise a world-class physique.

Turn up the volume

Endurance, in addition to sheer size, makes the legs a difficult body part to train. “It isn’t enough just to subject the legs to heavy overload,” Arnold said. “You have to use heavy weights and sufficient volume to stress the fibers involved and exhaust the endurance capacity of the muscles.”

Arnold’s early training wasn’t sufficiently high in volume. “For many years, I did only five sets of squats when I really should have been doing eight…[and] I did not put enough weight on the leg-press machine,” he said. “Once I realized my mistakes and corrected them, my thighs began to grow thick and massive.” At his peak, Arnold did at least 20 working sets for legs and took each set except his warm-ups to failure. This high-volume approach helped him put on the size and build the strength (his best was a 400-pound squat for eight reps) that turned around a weak bodypart.

Arnold’s high-volume approach is extremely taxing at first, but eventually the body adapts and strengthens. Try it for 6-8 weeks to induce dramatic changes in your own legs.

Muscle fatigue inevitably sets in when you do several sets to failure, but Arnold used his mind to fight it. “I accepted the fact that leg workouts simply have to be brutal to be effective,” he said. “Normal workouts are hard enough, but if thighs happen to be a weak point in your physique, you have to be prepared to push yourself even more. This involves a mental effort almost as much as a physical one.… This means forcing yourself to break down any inhibition or barrier.”

Don’t train legs without a partner. “A good training partner pushes you to handle more poundage and gives you incentive to grind out more reps per set,” Arnold wrote in his early autobiography. “Workouts are more fun with a partner as well as more competitive…you challenge each other.” When you’ve forced out all the reps you can for squats, for example, stand holding the weight for a moment, then do one more rep (with a partner spotting you) to push your body to its absolute limit.

On the picture, Tom squatting with Arnold.

Androgen Receptors

Let me just get semi technical for one minute. The human body is a very complex place full of very small yet important and complex physiological responses that occur during strength training. In our bodies we have multiple muscle building hormones and peptides that are secreted when the body is given a particular stressor, in this case resistance training. For example one of these hormones is testosterone, everyone knows testosterone!

So when the body is going through an intense resistance based exercise, testosterone binds to these androgen receptors (in certain cell types), but in other cell types testosterone is converted by 5-alpha-reductase to dihydrotestosterone which is an even more powerful agonist for activation of androgen receptors.

You’re probably wondering what the hell this has to do with having chicken legs. Well hang in there my point is coming…

So testosterone is responsible primarily for the development of male primary sexual characteristics (sex organs), whereas dihydrotestosterone is responsible for secondary male characteristics (facial hair, stature, muscle mass, Adams apple, broad chest & shoulders). So you can see why these androgen receptors are important in male characteristic development (muscle growth).

This now brings me onto my point of why AR’s (Androgen Receptors) play an important role in being able to build big legs or not.

In most cases men have a higher Androgen Receptor Density in their shoulders and less density in their legs. This means that changes in cell behavior around the deltoids and the upper body is going to be more noticeable than that of the lower body due to higher regulation of gene transcription. This COULD explain why some people’s legs are stubborn and take a bit longer to grow than the upper body. This is not scientifically proven as far as AR density effecting muscle growth goes but AR density does have a few studies on the matter.

The study: The expression of androgen receptors in human neck and limb muscles: effects of training and self-administration of androgenic-anabolic steroids. Kadi et all, 2000

The purpose of this study was to investigate the immunohistochemical expression of androgen receptors (AR) in human vastus lateralis and trapezius muscles and to determine whether long-term strength training and self-administration of androgenic-anabolic steroids are accompanied by changes in AR content. Biopsy samples were taken from eight high-level power-lifters (P), nine high-level power-lifters who used anabolic steroids (PAS) and six untrained subjects (U). The proportion of AR-containing myonuclei (the nucleus of a muscle cell ) per fibre cross-section was higher in the trapezius than in the vastus lateralis. In the trapezius, the proportion of AR-containing myonuclei was higher in P compared to U and in PAS compared to both P and U. On the contrary, in the vastus lateralis, there were no differences in AR content between the three groups. Myonuclear number in both muscles was higher in P compared to U and in PAS compared to both P and U. In conclusion, AR content differs greatly between human neck and limb muscles. Moreover, the regulation of AR-containing myonuclei following training and self-administration of androgenic-anabolic steroids is muscle dependent.

all that being said, how do we go about changing those stubborn legs?

•Train for everything! Power, Speed, Strength, Hypertrophy.

Legs respond to variety, this doesn’t have to be 20 different exercises but I would say you need to incorporate multiple training styles into your lower body routine for maximum efficiency. Speed deadlifts, Maximum effort squats, Cleans, High rep front squats, Volume calf work etc. etc.

•Vary rep ranges

How many people do you know who train in the 8-10 rep range? I myself used to be scared of landing on an odd number. What’s wrong with 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13?

•Heavy and light

I am a firm believer in going heavy on squats! BUT… if size is the goal then you must hit those higher rep ranges! 3-5 sets on heavy squats followed by a deload set of 20-30% for 10-15+ reps will test the will of any athlete!

•TRAIN DEM CALVES!!!

It has to be done. I have the worst calves ever! But I still train them. One word… VOLUME!!! Without the right amount of volume and time under tension your calves will not grow. Try this: Rather than count your reps, try timing your sets. What I like to do is have my stop watch on my phone running constantly not just to time my rest but to time my actual sets. So I will make sure each set lasts between 20-40 seconds aiming to hit a rep range of around 12-15 reps

If your legs still don’t grow after all hard work, then ask yourself the following questions:

Are You Working The Muscle Enough?

If you are going to complain about a lagging muscle then make sure it’s a muscle you actually spend time and energy to work out.  It’s silly to complain about your lagging leg muscle when you avoid performing important compound leg exercises such as squats, deadlifts and lunges in favor of the easier leg machine exercises like the leg raise and leg press.  In this situation the simple way of correcting this would be to start training these muscles properly.

Are You Using Faulty Technique?

If you are putting out the effort and just not reaping the rewards of increased muscle mass then maybe it’s time to look at your technique.  You might be using a flawed technique which could be cheating you of some amount of muscle gains.  One of the most common mistakes is using momentum to lift the weights instead of employing the targeted muscle.  To get the most out of your workout you should use slow, controlled movements to stimulate as much muscle fibers as possible to induce hypertrophy.  Swinging weight by using momentum will not build any muscle.  Sometimes you might fall back into the wrong technique even though you know the right thing so you need to be aware and conscious at all times during your workout.  Maintaining proper form and technique is crucial.

Going deep

Are You Overworking the Muscle in Question?

Sometimes a lagging muscle is a direct consequence of overwork of that particular muscle.  Your muscles need time to rebuild and if you are overworking a particular muscle then that muscle will end up getting smaller.  Your biceps are usually prone to overtraining because this muscle is so small yet it is involved in almost every exercise you perform in the gym, therefore, on your arm days it is not necessary to do no more than two exercises for this muscle group.  In weightlifting less is more because muscle is build outside and not inside of the gym.  If a particular muscle refuses to grow then it’s time to start scaling back how often you work this muscle or the number of exercises you perform for this muscle.  Your muscles need recuperation so you need to take this into account when designing your workout routine.

Muscle Interference – Is One Muscle Holding Back the Growth of Another?

In the event that you are training correctly and with proper technique while giving your muscles sufficient recovery time then your lagging muscle might be due to muscle interference.  For example, an underdeveloped chest might be due to the fact that your chest muscle is too weak in comparison to your shoulder muscles and for that reason when you perform the benchpress your shoulder muscles end up doing most of the work instead of the chest muscle this exercise is supposed to target.  In order to correct this you should always exhaust your shoulder muscles before you begin to work your chest so that when you perform your chest targeted exercises your chest muscles are actually brought into play.  This would mean restructuring your workout routine where necessary so that you do your shoulder workouts immediately before you start working out your chest.

Have You Found Out What You’re Doing Wrong Yet?

A lagging muscle is an opportunity to reexamine your workout routine to correct deficiencies that might be holding back progress of a particular muscle.  There is no need for a lagging muscle to remain underdeveloped as long as you take the necessary steps to find out what you are doing wrong.

A good story to point out how tough it is to get great calves is a story of Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was at the beach in Venice, California, one day when a young bodybuilder came up to him and said that he would like to have calves like Arnold's. Arnold pointed to his lower leg and told him that his calves cost him 600 hours of painful training. If he wanted to have calves like Arnold, he would have to pay the price [1]. (Dave Draper & Arnold shown to the right)

In other words, bodybuilders whose calves simply do not grow do not train them hard enough or with enough weight. Give your calves the intensity, sets, and weights they need and your calves will simply be forced to grow. There simply are no short cuts. Learn to vary your program and use shocking methods and you will not be the guy hiding your legs in your longs pants.

Most people who call themselves “hardgainer” are ectomorphs with long thin legs. Because nutrition is from the utmost importance I you want to build musclemass, I added some usefull info on macro nutrients

Saturday means heavy legs and a cheat meal as a reward. Big eating and heavy lifting are what carried young Arnold to his first Mr. Universe title.

You probably know that protein is a really important macronutrient for building muscle. In fact, my little sister probably knows that protein is important for building muscle. There is some truth to this – if you don’t eat enough protein your body won’t build muscle. This is a common problem for some absolute beginners, vegetarians and vegans – they eat too little protein and thus struggle to put on muscle.

But what about your regular gym dude? What about the guy that trains 6 times a week? What about a skinny ectomorph trying to pack on muscle? They all probably think they need a hell of a lot of protein.

… and eating a diet overly high in protein is a great way to limit the amount of muscle you build—especially as an ectomorph.

I’ve been doing a lot of research lately into clinical studies conducted on muscle growth. Most of them are funded by supplement companies who pay their bills by selling protein powders, so these companies have a huge vested interest in proving that more protein = more muscles.

Oddly enough even the protein manufacturers haven’t been able to show that there’s a correlation between more protein and more muscle once the minimum required amount is met. In fact, so long as you get the minimum required amount of protein for building muscle, eating more protein on top of that has very little effect beyond the extra calories that you get from it. Time and time again studies have shown that you’d gain significantly more muscle by getting those calories from carbs instead.

This is because when we consume an abundance of carbohydrates (and calories in general) protein oxidation goes down, allowing us to use that protein more efficiently to synthesize muscle. More carbs and more calories means we’re about to build more muscle out of less protein.

Some of the carbohydrates we eat are digested and then stored in our muscles in the form of glycogen, and it’s that muscle glycogen that entirely fuels our weightlifting workouts. Since the glycogen in our muscles fuels our workouts, not consuming enough carbohydrates will make us fatigue far sooner, drastically reducing our workout performance. A crappy workout means less weight lifted, fewer muscle fibers stimulated … and less muscle built.

That varies, but for a classic ectomorph it’s around 0.8 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight per day—and that’s already playing it safe. Beyond that amount it hasn’t been proven that more protein results in any more muscle growth whatsoever.

So let’s say you’re a classic ectomorph weighing in at lean 150 pounds and on a muscle-building diet of 3400 calories. If you get even just 20% of your calories from protein you’re eating 170 grams of protein. That’s all you need plus a bit extra—just in case. Keep in mind that there’s no harm to your health in eating loads of protein, just that the muscle-building benefit comes from the extra calories, not the fact that you’re consuming protein

Even those extra calories aren’t packing quite the caloric punch that another macronutrient would, because processing protein results in a lot of energy being “wasted” as heat. If you’ve ever heard that high protein diets increase your metabolism then you know what I mean. Your body expends a certain amount of energy digesting and processing nutrients, and this is dubbed the thermic effect of food (TEF). If you eat 800 calories of protein you’ll lose about a quarter of them to heat. With carbs or fat you’d lose less than a tenth. This is great under some circumstances, such as weight loss, but when building muscle the high TEF that protein has means that you’d need to eat way more calories. For skinny guys with small appetites this can make bulking up a lot harder.

Add in the fact that protein is incredibly satiating—it reduces your appetite—and all of a sudden you have poor ectomorphs trying to force feed themselves way past the point of fullness way more often than they want to eat. Carbohydrates often have the inverse effect, and even may result in something called a “rebound effect”, where you notice that your appetite increases again shortly after eating. For chubsters this is often the express highway to fatville, but for us ectomorphs this is an incredible tool for loving a calorie-heavy diet that will have us building loads of muscle.

Ectomorphs usually try and simultaneously increase their healthy intake of nutrition while accidentally doing mainstream appetite control tricks for chubby people.

Where you should be getting the bulk of your calories

For most ectomorphs eating enough to gain weight, 20% of your calories coming from protein works out to a little over a gram of protein per pound bodyweight – and that’s more than enough protein while still leaving plenty of room for other nutrients.

If you count grams, something like 1 gram of carbs per pound bodyweight would be the minimum you’d want to consume (and that’s a good minimum when cutting), but optimum performance and muscle-building usually comes at 3 grams per pound, which is more like 50% of your daily calories.

This may sound counterintuitive, considering that muscle can only be synthesized out of protein, and that carbs are currently infamous for being the fat-causing macronutrient … but they actually have a ton of anabolic effects and really don’t have much risk of being converted into fat if you consume them intelligently.

 But what about post-workout?

That’s the exception, right? Okay so we do advise getting in some good protein after working out, and studies pretty unanimously support the benefits of that (study, study), but a huge part of the benefit actually comes from the calories/carbohydrates that we recommend having alongside it, and not just the protein. (study) In fact, you can build tons of extra muscle just by having carb-filled post-workout shakes without any protein in them at all, especially if they have creatine in them. (study)

Why doesn’t everybody know this then?

A lot of the most popular diets these days, like the Paleo diet, the ketogenic diet, low carb diets, etc., are high protein, high fat … and low carb. That’s not wrong, per say (although they do sometimes rather unfairly vilify carbs), just not ideal for guys like us. Different body types, lifestyles, goals and training plans produce radically differing nutritional demands:

1.Naturally chubby guys often respond better to a diet higher in protein and fats, and these guys make up the majority. As ectomorphs we’re thyroid dominant (hormone talk), meaning that we’re better at processing carbohydrates. It’s unlikely that we’ll convert them to fat, and with a proper workout plan in place we’ll use those carb calories to build wicked amounts of muscle.

2.Most guys aren’t trying to gain weight, let alone rapidly gain weight. If you were asking me how to maintain your muscle mass or lose fat my nutrition advice would be different—but we’re trying to build muscle. In order to do this we need to intelligently stimulate our muscles and increase our carb intake. Those carbs will help us ectomorphs build lean muscle.

3.Sedentary lifestyles reduce the demand that we have for carbohydrates. Our bodies use carbohydrates as an energy source … so if you don’t expend much energy you don’t need many carbohydrates. Most guys drive to work, sit in an office and daydream about weighing less. Those guys don’t need carbs. Since overweight people living that lifestyle are so prevalent, this is great nutrition advice for the masses. For better or worse, we aren’t the masses. As ectomorphs though we have higher metabolisms and naturally expend a lot of energy (often as heat). Add in a weightlifting plan and our energy requirements shoot up even further.

4.Strength training and carbs are a match made in heaven. There’s a window surrounding our workouts where carbs are extremely beneficial. Even beefy guys will often benefit from consuming plenty of carbs within the two hours following their workouts if they’re looking to maximize muscle gain while minimizing fat gain. As ectomorphs this window doubles. If our goal is rapid muscle gain we should even be eating plenty of carbs up to 48 hours after our last workout (within reason). If you work out three times per week, as we do, well then that’s pretty much always.

Does this mean too much protein is bad for us?

No no. It may not be the optimal way to build muscle, but it won’t strain your kidneys, stress your liver out, make you ugly, lower your sperm count, or any of the other anti-protein myths you may have heard. (study) Protein is a perfectly fine macronutrient and you can digest over 100 grams of it from a single meal without a hitch. You just don’t need ludicrous amounts of it when eating at a calorie surplus and trying to build optimal amounts of lean muscle as an ectomorph. We can do better.

Conclusion

Now this doesn’t mean that protein isn’t important, but rather that most of your calories should probably come from carbohydrates. It’s rare to find a skinny guy (or even a skinny-fat guy) that that won’t hold true for. If you’re eating a calorie surplus large enough to build muscle and even 20% of your calories are coming from protein you’ll be just fine. That will give you more than the required amount of protein, and any extra is muscle gravy.

Where should most of your calories come from? Everyone is a little different, which is why it can be really helpful to track your results and adjust accordingly … but likely you’ll want to be getting 50% or so of those calories from dense and healthy carbohydrates, like potatoes, yams, fruits, grains, rice, dairy, legumes, etc. And maybe 30% from nutritious fats, like olive oil, butter, avocados, fish oil, nuts, coconut oil, eggs, cheese, etc.

As you can imagine this opens the door to eating a pretty delicious, nutritious and well balanced diet even when trying to accomplish rapid and consistent change. And therein lies your best chance at building muscle.