How To Build Strong Legs – Love it or hate it, leg day is a non-negotiable. Use these 20 moves to get the most out of your leg training.
You didn’t hear it here first, but it bears repeating: Train your legs. Leg day can be a painful, DOMS-inducing experience, but ignoring your lower half also deprives the body of more muscle, improves mobility, and increases calorie burn. Also, do you want to look like Hercules upstairs and Chicken Little from the waist down?
How To Build Strong Legs
Aesthetics aside, leg training is an integral part of your performance if you play, well, any sport out there (strength-focused or otherwise). Your leg muscles produce the force on the lifting platform and propel you forward on the field.
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To enlighten you further about the benefits, and dare we say, fun of training your legs, we’ve put together a list of the best leg exercises. Moreover, we also delve into the benefits of leg training, how to properly train your legs, and much more. Let’s get it in.
Editor’s note: The content found is intended to be informational in nature, but should not be considered medical advice
. When starting a new training and/or diet regimen, it is always a good idea to consult a trusted medical professional. We are not a medical supplier. The opinions and articles contained on this site are not intended for use in the diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional.
Back squats—often referred to as the king of lower-body exercises—are a compound exercise that challenges every muscle in the legs. It also requires upper body muscles to stabilize the load and protect the spine – making it one of the most effective full body exercises you can do.
The Best Leg Workout Routine For Beginners
Back squats build strength and muscle and enhance the movement patterns we engage in on a daily basis, giving them the triple crown when choosing the perfect exercise.
Place a barbell in a power rack at shoulder height, loaded with an appropriate amount of weight. Lower down on the barbell, set the bar on the upper traps, or set the bar on the shoulder blades if you’re doing low bar squats.
Brace your core and lift the weight off the rack. Take small steps back, one foot at a time, to position yourself. With your chest lifted, squat down until your thighs are parallel to the floor. Now, drive again by pushing your feet across the floor.
Coach’s tip: Your squatting technique and technique is very individual. Take your time practicing your most comfortable and sustainable position.
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Sets and Repetitions: Use back squats to simultaneously build strength and muscle. Go for 3 to 5 sets of 4 to 6 reps.
The front squat can be a great alternative to the traditional back squat. If you find that barbell back squats aggravate your lower back or you have a shoulder injury, this front squat variation may suit you instead.
Because you’re holding the barbell in front of you, this squat variation challenges your back and upper core muscles — shifting the load from back to front. This also requires more thoracic stability and forces the lifter to be more upright, better for core recruitment and positioning.
Place a barbell in a power rack at shoulder height, supported with an appropriate weight. Extend your arms straight in front of you so that your hands touch the bar. Place your three middle fingers on the bar, then push your palms up. Bring your elbows under the bar so they’re pointing straight ahead.
How To Build Strong Legs
Step back, so that the bar is just outside the rack, and keep your elbows pointing forward. With your chest up, squat down until the bottoms of your thighs are parallel to the floor and drive across the floor with your feet pointing up.
Trainer tip: If the front rack position is uncomfortable, you may need to stretch your back muscles or move your thoracic spine.
Raising your leg on a bench creates instability and increases the exercise’s range of motion. The instability in the Bulgarian squat forces you to balance, which recruits smaller stabilizing muscles in your hips and quads.
Squatting with a wider range of motion increases muscle stretch – enhancing your mobility and muscle building tension found on your glutes, hamstrings and quad muscles.
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Hold a dumbbell in each hand and stand about a foot in front of the bench. Put one foot on a bench. Support your core and squat down so that your legs are bent 90 degrees. You can sit down a bit, but don’t let your knee touch the floor. Hold this down for a minute and then go backwards.
Coach’s tip: The closer your working foot is to the bench, the more emphasis is placed on your quads via a forward knee motion.
The leg press does not cause you to load your torso with weight and your back props against the pillow, which gives you more momentum. As a result, you can load this exercise with more weight than most leg exercises. This factor makes the leg press a great accessory for getting bigger and stronger thighs.
It’s also safer since you can hang the sled by simply turning the handles in and out. As a bonus, you can load and unload the leg press more quickly, which makes it useful for drop sets. You can perform a high-rep set, deadlift the weight plates, do another set, deadlift the plates, and so on.
Your Guide To Building Next Level Legs
Sit in a leg press bench, and place your feet in the center of the sled, approximately shoulder-width apart. Press the sled out of the rack, lower the safety bars, and then slowly lower the sled toward your chest until your thighs are bent at 90 degrees. Press the sled back, but don’t lock your knees. If your lower back or hips lift the bench as you lift the weight back, you’re going too low.
The brainchild of Georg Hackenschmidt, the squat has evolved into one of the most popular and effective machine variations for adding serious strength and muscle to your legs. Sharing traits with the back squat, this exercise enhances the squat movement pattern to build strength that translates into countless other lifts.
As a bonus, the machine creates external stability, protects against injury and helps with pre-existing injuries since it has a predetermined movement pattern.
Your standing on the foot platform will more closely mimic your back squatting position. Your feet should be slightly outside shoulder width with feet angled slightly outward – they should be in line with the knee as it is coming forward during the descent.
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Your torso should be stable with your abdominal muscles engaged and your lower back flat on the back cushion. Maintain a neutral head position as you lower your body until the bottoms of your thighs are parallel to the platform of your feet and drive across your feet upwards.
Coach’s tip: You should be able to sink into a low squat here even if you can’t during a free-weight squat.
This deadlift variation is nearly identical to the standard deadlift, except that you lower the barbell to mid-calf level by driving your hips back while keeping your core engaged with tension on your hamstrings and glutes.
The Romanian deadlift is one of the best body development variations, as it helps you build muscle, improve your regular deadlift, and strengthen your hips and lower back, thereby reducing the chance of injury by performing similar movements.
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Load a barbell with less weight than you would in a traditional deadlift, but sit in the same deadlift position — feet shoulder-width apart and hands holding the bar outside the knees. Lift your chest up and then drop your hips and pull on the bar until your hips are completely locked.
Now, push your hips back and lower the bar until it’s about halfway through your shins. You should feel a stretch in your hamstrings. Finish by driving your hips forward, bringing the weight back to the starting position.
This hamstring flexion has you kneeling, with your feet anchored behind you, and lowering your body toward the floor by just bending your knees. This places the burden on your hamstrings alone to support your body weight. The Nordic hamstring curl is an excellent move for building muscle and preventing injury.
50 elite football teams in Denmark were completing their usual 10-week hamstring training during the mid-season break. Half of the teams added two to three sets of five to 12 reps of northern hamstring curls one to three sessions per week. During that season, the group adding the Nordic braids had 15 hamstring injuries compared to 52 in the non-Northern group. (1)
Anatomy Of Leg Muscles — Plus, How To Make The Most Of Leg Exercises
Anchor your feet under something sturdy—a barbell, bench, and the legs of a cable machine—and sit on your exercise mat. Extend your arms in front of you, stay
