Hell on Wheels
You Can Build Herculean Legs, But it Takes Guts
by Robert "Fortress" Fortney
Hercules: good legs, lousy movie. Fierce,
productive leg training is the true domain of the serious lifter. Gyms
from here to anywhere are littered with young and inexperienced weight
trainers who gladly ground and pound their upper bodies into dust, yet
expend minimal effort, and perform classic lower-body exercises
dismally. That is,
if they train legs at all. Seriously, what could be worse?
Fact
is, if you want a balanced physique, both in aesthetic appeal and
athletic performance, you have to devote regular workout sessions to
your "wheels" and strive to become a master. All the greatest
bodybuilders (not necessarily the most winning), powerlifters, and
strength athletes became great because they developed an intimate and
painful relationship with lower-body training. There simply is no other
way.
Master! MASTER!
In case somebody didn't catch the reference. Yes, I'm a metalhead. Before
we proceed, let's discuss this whole "master" concept. Being a master
of legs training has nothing to do with the ability to load a leg press
with 30 frickin' plates and bang out "big reps" that see the knee
joints barely articulating. And it isn't masterful to have the courage
and stamina to lift until you puke, either. Two admirable qualities, to
be sure, but not necessarily masterful. No, being a gym
master is all about knowing the finer nuances of proper exercise form
and being able to exploit these to your benefit. Think Tom Platz. Think
Ed Coan. Most likely, don't think of yourself. Yet.
This could be you. But not for a while.
Leg Extensions Blow Now
I'd like to take a few minutes and rip on a common piece of
leg-training apparatus, the standard leg extension machine. What a hunk
of crap, huh? Unless you're recovering from a
verylong period
of bed rest, jettison the leg extension from your routine. I guess it's
also OK to use it to warm up the knees and muscles. But the truth is,
not much muscle has
ever been built — nor strength developed — from performing the movement.
This douche looks too damn happy for this to be a good exercise. In
fact, I'd suggest quite confidently that more knees have been wrecked
or aggravated by its use and misuse than any other lower-body exercise.
So to all those who claim squats hurt their knees: It's most likely
those full-stack knee extensions you yank up, Chuck. Not your
quarter-depth 185-pound squats, you wuss.
Wasteful Ways Gradual
use of heavier and heavier resistance over several sets of an exercise
is a good idea for most trainers. Doing such a thing warms the muscles
and connective tissue and, in general, prepares the mind and body for
the most challenging reps to come. Somewhere, however, the concept
behind pyramid-training has largely been lost. The idea is to increase poundage as repetitions
decrease.
So why is it I see a majority of folks hitting reps to failure on all
the damn sets? Has it ever occurred to these folks that doing such a
thing only pre-fatigues their muscles for the sets with the most
resistance? You know, the
growth sets? Bench pressing 225 to failure, or worse, to
negativefailure (forced reps), is gonna kill what you could ultimately perform
with a top weight of, say, 275 pounds. I'm talking about the difference
between getting three reps and getting six to eight reps! There's no
law against performing as few as three reps on your last "warmup" sets,
even if you aim to jam out medium-to-high reps on the top sets.
Paths To Volume, the
Right Way! Achieving
training volume the way I described above, by performing as many reps
as possible, including the warm-up sets, is a stupid way to go about
it. Dramatic muscle gains can come from doing a ton of work
in a relatively short period of time, however. Determining a poundage
to use as a "work" weight and then performing several straight sets
with minimal rest in between can go a long way towards huge total
volume. Or, if you prefer, once you arrive at your top
training resistance on a movement (the right way), go to failure on
each successive set going
down the other side of the pyramid
(as long as you don't mind struggling at the end with what is normally
for you a light weight). The idea, regardless, is to cram as many reps
and sets into an hour (or a bit more) as humanly possible.
Don't be a Partial-Reppin' Bozo! This
laziness has gotta stop, people. It's gotten so bad that quarter-inch
depth on leg presses and squats are the new craze with the kids; little
shits who have grown up cutting corners on hard work. I guess doing
half-rep bench presses wasn't lazy enough.
Are you man enough to squat like this girl? Look,
take your squats down below parallel (keep going, tough guy, you're not
there yet) and bring your knees to at least your chest when you leg
press. You can go even lower with your toes slightly flared so your
knees will come out to the sides. The half-rep phenomenon
usually has something to do with ego. That is, the trainee is afraid
his fragile little self-image will be bruised if people see him using
the kind of weight he'd have to use if he actually performed full
repetitions. It's a vicious circle of stupidity and weakness, however,
because without full repetitions the lifter won't ever develop
impressive strength.
This is why Homer will never develop impressive strength. Deep
reps considerably lessen the resistance you can use but produce 20
times the pump and go a long way in helping to actually build some
muscle. What's that you say? You say your joints can't take it? Oh,
jeez. If that were true, you'd be hesitant to unlock your knees with
the 15 plates per side you use every week on the leg press. Do some of you hear the excuses coming out of your mouth? They might as well be coming out of somewhere else.
The "Variety" Lie Many
still like to champion the need for weight trainers to do lots and lots
of variations of exercises in each workout to "stimulate the muscles
from all angles." Rubbish. How many different ways can the legs move?
Speaking about quads and hams, they articulate the lower legs in line
with the upper thighs, and articulate the lower legs back and behind
the upper legs. The best way to overload the muscles of the
quads and hams is to push at something with your feet. So, sure, mix
stuff up from
workout to workout (leg press this time; squat
next time), but don't fall into the trap of believing you must sit and
press a weight, stand and press a weight, lean back against a sled and
press a weight, all in the same workout! If you're maximally
taxing a muscle or muscles, why must you do it from six different
angles and on different machines? Silly.
Squat:
The Exercise This
seems like the time to bring up just how valuable the squat exercise is
to leg development and overall bodybuilding. The Smith machine and hack
versions are OK, but pale horribly when butted up against the
ultimate-hardcore, free-bar kind. Don't even try to argue against this.
It's fact. There are physique athletes who claim standard leg
presses are better for developing the specific muscles on the fronts of
the thighs and this might be the case. However, nothing packs more
overall meat onto the entirety of the lower body and helps add muscular
bodyweight than the squat. You want to be 200-plus pounds of
reasonably-hard sinew? Squat. You wanna be a super athlete? Squat. You
want to be one badass shit kicker, period? Squat. Did I mention you should
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