The Ultimate Legs Program
Blasting Your Quads to Total Development
by Scott Abel

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I've been getting a lot of inquires lately from trainees. Judging from
the photos they send along, I'd say that 90% of them lack any real leg
development. At first I just assumed these were people
training for "beach muscles" and they didn't realize the dramatic
effects of lower body training. We're talking about increased workload
capacity, neural drive, nervous system adaptation, and improved
capacity for intensity. This is where real progress lies. But once I started doing assessments it was clear that these people were
training legs. They were just misinformed about what to do and how to
do it. Most were training with very low volume, higher loads (for
them), and very low reps. This is not the way to total leg development.
High volume, but hardly the kind of load Scott is talking about! For
true and long-lasting leg development, this program is one of the best
I've written. Whether it's appropriate for you as a trainee requires an
assessment of your conditioning level, current training protocol, and
workload capacity.

Amount vs. Duration of Overload Much
has been written on the interplay of load vs. duration of stress. This
has led to many of these important elements being taken out of context
and viewed in very narrow terms. Because duration is actually more
important to elicit an adaptive response, this led to the whole "tempo
training" idea that has been wrongly assigned to hypertrophy training. Artificially
increasing the duration of tension on the muscle via tempo actually
thwarts the power equation (explosiveness) and needlessly lowers the
amount of load that can be employed to performance. This hampers the
training response. The duration of overload on the target
muscles must be viewed over the course of a whole workout, not just one
set. This is also applied to an entire training protocol, as in using
weeks of biofeedback to ascertain the adaptive response. It's not
strength that leads to development, aesthetics, and thickness. It's density of strength.

Strength Density To
say development hinges on strength in terms of load is incorrect. To
say it centers on strength endurance is also misleading. The path to
real effective muscle development, thickness, fullness, and sweep is a
matter of strength density. The true test of whether you're
progressing isn't how much you're lifting coming out of the gate. A
better testament is the load you can handle at the end of a volume approach. When you're in a fatigued state (both metabolically and strength wise) and you're able to increase the load, that
is the key to productive results. It's your density of strength, and
not how much you can lift, that will earn you true hypertrophy and
development.

Aspects of Fatigue and Strength In
a program of this nature, both short term and long term fatigue must be
acknowledged. In terms of proper recovery, it's important to always
address the immediate aspects of fatigue vs. the accumulating aspects
of fatigue as the training continues. Also, systemic effects must not
be ignored. Specific planes and ranges of motion are important to
fatigue as "target training criteria" from one workout to the next. To properly excite
a lagging body part it's important to not only target it specifically,
but to force on-going adaptive responses as well. One of the best ways
of enhancing the hypertrophy response is to focus on all aspects that
contribute to strength. This includes an emphasis on the coordination
of muscles within specific movement patterns, the type of muscle
contraction, and increasing workload capacity. This
specific leg program is so efficient because it covers all aspects of
training: power, speed, plane of motion specificity, and
absolute/relative failure. The shortcoming of most training protocols
is that they have to neglect many of these elements in order to create
an adaptive response in one specific area. In terms of program design,
this is very short-sighted.

Let's Get to It The
program below is to be done on a three days on, one day off format.
After a break-in period of a few weeks, it can be changed to a three
on, one off, three on, two off format. This will add a rotational
element, which will influence the adaptive response since the days will
always be changing in terms of workouts and recovery. The most
important thing to remember is that it's not the load you use for a
given workout that matters, it's the load you finish with. I'm
going to outline the leg workouts here, but Day 2 and Day 4 are to be
upper body days divided between an anterior plane (push day) on Day 2,
and a posterior plane (pull day) on Day 4.

Day 1: Strength Density
A) Squats Warm up: Pyramid 3-5 sets
Work sets: 10 sets of 10 reps
B) Power deadlifts Warm up: 2-3 sets
Work sets: 5 x 8-10
Note: Use a lighter weight and focus on the speed of execution. Comments:
This workout requires the most mental maturity. Most people will want
to measure their strength, but that isn't the purpose here. This day is
all about creating strength density, or overall strength, for the
duration of a workout and not just within a set. While this
workout looks easy on paper, ten sets of squats can take forty-five
minutes to an hour by itself. Remember, this calls for full squats! If
you're going to ego train with half or quarter squats, don't even
bother. Next,
don't train to failure on Day 1. You need to pick a weight and stay
with it. Use self-assessment and biofeedback to determine when you
think you have two more reps in you and then rack the weight. The goal
is to try to use the same weight for all ten sets, or at least close to
it. As you fatigue around the fifth set or so, you may
require longer rest periods between sets. Use your oxygen debt and
self-assessment to determine when you should proceed to the next set.
If you find you have to lower the load by tremendous margins from sets
five to ten, then your strength density is lacking, or you're not
resting long enough between sets. On all days we want to use force decrement analysis
as a biofeedback tool to performance. Force decrement analysis is the
point at which performance starts to decline and the current rep is
performed slower than intended. You should always try to be
explosive with the reps. When you notice that the concentric (lifting
phase) is starting to slow down, it's a sign of pending fatigue and
shut down. When this happens, fully lock out the next rep, power
breathe, and then resume. To power breathe, suck in as much air as
possible, as fast as you can. This means you should never
choose a weight that you can just pop off with no effort or
concentration. Pick a weight where you notice force decrement around
seven or eight reps into the set. At that point, lock it out, breathe,
and then get your ten reps. Force decrement analysis is key for this
program.