Everybody knows that building thick, strong legs doesn’t come easy. But before you begin to put in the hard work, there are a few key aspects you need to be aware of. Also it’s good to have a few tricks up your sleeves just to make things a bit easier.
Having great legs require intense effort and smart training. Leg workouts are known to be very hard and challenging both physical and mentally, leaving almost nothing appealing about a leg workout session. I bet you’re thinking now “but leg day is so worth it!”, and you would be right to think so!
As you know, squats are a vital part of leg training, but they’re not the only exercise you should be doing. Here are a few things you should be focusing on for your legs workout:
- Don’t ignore your stabilizer muscles
These muscles are found in the hips and ensure stability and movement of the pelvis and hips. Most people neglect them and this often leads to injury. If you want to have effective movements and correct stability, you need to train these muscles.
- Lift heavy
Heavy weights are the key to a lean and defined lower body. They give your muscles the needed stress to create more muscles. When you lift heavy weights, your muscle fibers break down, multiplying and toughening up once they heal.
Use sufficient weights to stress the fiber involved in the exercise and exhaust your muscles’ endurance capacity.
- Make the most of your time
Do your exercises and your reps consecutively and limit your rest only to when it’s time to move to the next exercise.
- Fuel your body
You are going to need good quality protein and protein powders before and after your training. Keeping the muscles energized is a must so they don’t tire when you’re training them hard.
- Do your warm up each time you workout
The changes of muscle growth drop, while the chances of injury increase every time you are not doing your warm up. You need to do 5 minutes of light exercises such as cycling or running and then stretch your quads, hamstrings, calves and groin.
- High reps
Legs are used to endurance, so the best way to train them is to do high reps – at least 15 to 20.
Although normal leg workouts are hard enough, you have to push yourself even more. Sometimes you need to be brutal to be effective. Let’s name a couple of exercises you need for muscle gains:
- Every variation of lunges and squats
- Leg press
- Dead lifts
- Box jumps
- Leg extensions
- Lying, standing and seated leg curls
- Frog jumps & crab walk
“A good training partner pushes you to handle more poundage and gives you incentive to grind out more reps per set.” Arnold Schwarzenegger
Remember that your body produces testosterone and HGH when you train big muscles such as the ones in your legs. Having released more of these anabolic hormones in your body can help with bigger gains. Also, with big muscles, form is very important. Doing leg exercises using an incorrect form can be dangerous, leading to injury. So be mindful when performing any of these exercises and protect yourself in every way you can.