Maximize Your Leg Growth

Training one leg at a time has many benefits. Most importantly, it can fix muscle imbalances in both strength and size. You will improve your weaker points in your legs by training them one at a time, because when doing a bilateral exercise, your stronger, or more dominant, muscles will take over. By isolating one leg, this is reduced. While not very time efficient, this will bring more symmetry and balance to your legs.

 

Sissy Squats Aren’t For Sissies

 

If you incorporate sissy squats into your workouts, over time you will see some major growth and separation in your quads. A sissy squat is performed by placing your heels against some sort of block (or a thick dumbbell), putting pressure on the balls of your feet, and leaning back to stretch your quads forward while leaning back as far as you safely can. Over time, you will be able to lean back further, or hold it for longer. You will gain balance, agility, and strength the more you practice. While learning how to do sissy squats, it helps to brace yourself against a piece of equipment or rack until your body adapts to this new range of motion. Some gyms even have sissy squat equipment which stabilizes your legs, allowing you to lean back further or go deeper. Sissy squats also work your core and hip flexors. Sissy squats are extremely difficult to perform, so build up to it and be sure to monitor your knees and ankles, as they can easily be injured in this exercise.

 

Bodyweight Squats

 

Don’t underestimate the power of bodyweight squats in high reps. If you have never tried to do 100+ bodyweight squats, you may be surprised at how challenging they can be. It doesn’t always take a massive amount of weight to see results. Doing 100 reps of bodyweight squats can be a great warm-up exercise to get you pumped at the start of your workout, or even as a burnout finisher at the end of your workout.

If you can easily do 100 reps of body weight squats back-to-back, move on to incorporating 100 reps of sissy squats. Your quads will be burning by rep 15-20, and when you get nearer to 100, you will probably experience failure. 

 

The thing about bodyweight exercises is that you can always mix-and-match them. So you can do 20 reps regular bodyweight squats then 20 sissy squats, rinse and repeat. Or you may even find that you get an overall better leg burn (though not necessarily quad focused) by changing your foot placement and stance with the squats. 

 

Bodyweight Lunges… Going the Distance

 

Bodyweight lunges are one of the best exercises for quads, and you’re probably not using them to your best advantage. Now, I get it, we normally see women doing them, but for good reason. When done right, and for a lot of reps or distance, they are a quad burner. 

 

Walking lunges may motivate you more than static lunges, and they also allow for a deeper range of motion. When doing say 50 lunges per leg (ow!), if you are just counting the reps, you are probably just focused on hitting 50 then calling it quits (or you may even call it quits before you reach 50 because of the burn!), however, if you do your lunges by distance, you may be more inclined to stick to it and even push yourself harder. Set a marker, whether it be across the gym floor, the parking lot, a track, whatever it may be, and count 1 round of to the end and back as 1 lap. Set a goal for yourself to do a few laps (depending on the distance of the parking lot, 2 laps may be pretty aggressive). The thing is when you have some distance between points, you’re less likely to give up halfway. You may go beyond new limits of failure, which can really make you use your mind power to continue. It’s a true test of strength, inner and physical. 

 

Some other ways you can make your lunges more challenging is by first of all adding weight (duh), but also by changing which part of your foot you take off from. Some find that pressing off with the front ball of your foot to be most challenging for the quads. Next, you can incorporate 1.5 reps. As you raise yourself from the lunge, at the halfway-up point, go straight back down to do another half rep. Doing this half rep can allow you to go deeper in your lunge than initially, therefore getting more of a stretch deep in your quad. For the most part though, while doing a long distance of lunges, sticking to bodyweight and truly focusing on the muscle-mind connection will help you much better than worrying about the weights or just getting through the motions with the weights. Deeply focus on each rep, and the burn will come.

 

Stop Holding Back

 

You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) save your energy for certain lifts every workout. In fact you should train every exercise as if it’s the only exercise you’re doing that day. Each exercise should be exhausting and feel like its draining of other exercises (that’s the point). 

 

Think of it like this on a leg press: 100 reps with a 45 plate can be exhausting. 50 reps with 2 plates on each side can be exhausting too. And 25 reps with 3 plates can be draining by the end of your last set. My point is you don’t always have to lift the heaviest weight. Yes lifting heavy builds muscle, but since everyone’s genetic makeup is different, if that has been failing you, then changing things up by doing higher reps with lower weight to the point of exhaustion or failure might be the change you need, even if its just temporary.

It shouldn’t matter which exercise comes first, in fact doing lighter or “easier exercises” should have established that muscle mind  connection for when you get to higher weights, therefore instead of just exerting yourself, you’re engaging the targeted muscles 

 

Nutrition

 

When it comes to nutrition, everyone has different needs. If you want to be ripped, you need to be in a deficit. If you want to be jacked, then you might need to eat a little more to help muscle recovery. You will find that proper nutrient intake will help you get through especially difficult workouts. For example, if you know that you’re about to hit legs hard, its okay to have some extra oatmeal to help fuel your workout, or to have a larger snack after your workout. Do what you feel is best for your body and goals, and be moderate in your choices.