Superior Leg Development
Our leg muscles are some of the largest muscles in the human body, yet many weightlifters willingly fail to train them as much as they should. We spend the majority of the day using our legs wherever we go, so exercising your legs may seem useless to some people.
Diehard gym rats hate leg day just the same, as it requires more energy than other exercise days and can result in some of the worst DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) you’ve ever experienced.
Unfortunately, choosing to neglect legs because you dislike exercising them is never the solution, as this quickly leads to disproportionate physiques with huge arms and sticks for legs.
The quadriceps, located anterior to the femur bone, develops through an extension of the lower legs. The three main muscles of the quads include the vastus lateralis, rectus femoris, and vastus medialis form the ‘tear drop’ near the top of the knee.
The hamstrings, containing the biceps femoris, semitendinosus, and semimembranosus muscles, have dense type II fibers that make up the majority of the muscle in the thigh.
To properly train these denser muscles, a higher rep range than normal is recommended to see any great results. Keep reading to find out the best workout routine to develop great looking legs.
Best Methods to Develop Your Legs
The recommendation for training legs in many fitness magazines and bodybuilding books mostly suggest low rep, heavy weights to really develop size. Especially for the holy grail of all leg exercises, the back squat.
Many weightlifters learned their technique from classic books like Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe or The Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding written by Arnold Schwarzenegger, both of which emphasize the importance of using 5 x 5 for beginners to build mass quickly.
5 x 5 working sets are great for establishing a good base of strength in the beginning and will shock your legs for growth, however, this growth may come to a halt once your body adapts to this method.
Higher reps are generally recommended in lower body workout routines because of the size principle, which states that our smaller muscle fibers are recruited before our larger ones (see Do You Have to Lift Heavy to Build Muscle).
Targeting smaller and larger muscle fibers with high reps gave better results in a study of well-trained young men for 8 weeks.
You can always alternate between high rep and low rep range training from week to week while you track your results.
Leg training with machines doesn’t have the same results as the plane for contraction and extension are always fixed, which increases the stability of the exercise. For the most growth, you need exercises that force you to control the weight with your muscles.
If alternating between high rep and low reps isn’t growing your legs fast enough, you can advance to the most brutal of all exercises: German Volume Training.
German Volume Training can be used for any muscle group, but for the legs, they require doing an extensive amount of reps that will make most people cringe just thinking about them.
Instead of doing 4-5 sets for each exercise, this amount increases to 10 sets, with enough time for rest between each set. Rest times can be as long as 3 minutes and short as 90 seconds.
An example of a GVT Leg Day:
Back Squat – 10 x 10 reps Rest: 120sec
Standing Calf Raise – 3 x 50 reps Rest: 90sec
Seated Calf Raise – 3 x 50 reps Rest: 90sec
Reverse Lunges – 10 x 10reps Rest: 90sec
Finally, you have sissy squats, which are bodyweight exercises that can be done in the gym or in your home. These are a lot more difficult to perform as you need strong quads to perform this exercise along with great core strength.
These are also great for working on your calves:
The Wrap Up
To properly develop the quads and hamstrings, you need a good balance of low rep and high rep work to make them grow. For beginners I would recommend a standard 5 x 5 program with compound movements, then advancing to higher rep work after a year or so. As your body begins to adapt and growth slows down, the German Volume Training is a challenging workout that can help break through strength plateaus you’ve been struggling with.
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