Ahh, the coveted leg day.
Some people relish in it, bask in it, yearn for it.
While others cower away from it, avoid it, and pretend it doesn’t exist.
The former attacks it full steam ahead, owns it and makes it their bitch.
The latter half-asses it, pussy foots around it or avoids it altogether.
One makes steady progress through the years while the other hopes for the best and wears baggy pants to hide their pitiful excuse for legs.
Growing up I was in an interesting place on this spectrum.
I went all in on my leg days, but I didn’t have much to show for it.
I dove into leg day on a weekly basis, leaving crushed and holding onto the railing and a wobbled down the stairs.
Driving my stick shift on the way home was always an adventure. Will I make it home safe or will my legs get goofy and make me crash into a garbage can?
I kicked ass and took names during my workout, but looking back the quality of my movement, ability to really dial into the musculature and make the muscles do the work and the intelligence of the programming was trash.
Showing up matters 100% of the time, but how you show up matters just as much.
I blasted through the movements with as much effort as I could muster up but it left my muscles feeling left out and joints feeling banged up. My body actually aged a lot more than it should have by my age because of my poor mechanics and lack of care for longevity.
I’m 30 and I have issues you shouldn’t have until your 50-60.
Not a pity party comment, just giving perspective.
And honestly I wouldn’t change a thing. Yeah, my back is old as hell, my shoulder needs constant love and attention, but I learned in the trenches for years and know exactly what to teach my clients.
I know exactly how to guide them to avoid the mistakes I made and how to create an environment in the body that enables steady progress, strength gains and muscle growth.
I’ve never had a client get injured on my watch in 10 years of coaching, and I attribute that fact to my attention to detail but also my hyper focus on technique and not fucking things up.
Anyway, I digress…
Leg day!
First off, you want to warm up. Without a proper warm up you’re leaving your long term health to chance (like I used to do) and allowing performance to decrease. Do a dynamic warm up with 3-5 moves and get the blood pumping while improving on movement quality.
Here’s a sample dynamic warm up:
- Worlds greatest stretch – 5 each
- Inch worm – 10
- Up down dog – 10
- Side lunge – 5 each
Next up you want to organize a leg day that will hit things appropriately and effectively. Just because you string together several leg movement doesn’t mean it’s sound and could leave you unbalanced and beat up.
Let’s start off with a standard leg day. Say you will be hitting legs once per week and want to grow them wheels.
I’d say a good place to start is by trying to hit all the muscle groups.
Do a knee dominant move
Do a hip dominant move
Do a single leg move
Do a calf move
Perhaps some isolation moves
And you’re golden.
That setup would look something like this:
- Goblet squat
- Hip thrust
- Reverse lunge
- Standing calf raise
- Leg extension
- Leg curl
If you’re stepping it up and hitting legs twice a week, you could perform that same style of workout, but change the rep scheme. Maybe the first day you keep it at low reps (3-6) and second day you bang out higher rep (12-20).
OR
You could split it into a more quad biases day and hams biased day:
Day 1
Goblet squat
Walking lunge
Leg extension
Standing calf raise
Day 2
Hip thrust
Deficit reverse lunge
Back ext
Leg curl
Seated calf raise
I always follow up my workouts with a nice stretch. You’ll begin the recovery process, benefit from deep breathing, and leave the gym feeling more mobile and less beat up.
The process is just described is just one way to get the job done, rather than THE way. I encourage you to tinker with variables and find what works for you.
But either way, give this a shot. You can’t do wrong with the basics.
You’ll eliminate risk of injury, maximize growth potential and your homies will stop shitting on you because your girl’s legs are more impressive than yours.