Wednesday, May 1, 2013

How to build legs?

The legs and the back are the two muscle groups that represent the foundation of your body. The stronger your legs and back the more stable you are while training the rest of your body. Any weakness here will reflect on the rest of your training sessions, the stability of your core, and the precision of your techniques.

As mentioned in an earlier post the legs can be divided into 4 major groups: quads, hamstrings, gluts   and calves.

The best exercise for the quads and the gluts is the squat. If done right, squats can be building your legs, stabilizing your body, and burning your body fat during your resting time. You start this exercise from the standing position with your feet shoulder-width apart, toes pointing outward (to slightly to the sides). In the bottom position the lumber area should be straight, the knees should be above the toes, shoulders and head should be as close to the standing position as possible and the thighs should be parallel to the ground.

Variation of this technique are available and tailored for each case. Like if you have a comparatively weaker tear drop you can use a wider than shoulders feet position and change the weight accordingly. Also doing the squats with the weights on the front (on your arms and shoulders) helps for the same purpose. Also a deeper drop might be a source of knee injuries, so in cases of existing knee injuries you don't have to go really parallel to the ground.

Leg press is another alternative if you can't support the weight with your back, like in case you have osteoporosis or degenerative desk disease (check with your doctor, I am not giving you any medical advise here, ok? :-)).

Another exercise for the tear drop and the thighs in general is the leg extension. It is not recommended in case of knee injuries, but it helps shape the legs.

The dead lifts also involve the thighs and with the proper resistance and feet positioning you can train the back, gluts, and the legs with the same move.

The hamstrings are trained with leg curls, whether from the standing or laying down position there is no much difference except that you can recognize the weaker leg in the standing position (because you do one at a time) so that you give it more attention.

Glutes can be trained separately with glutes extension machines or the cable. They are very important in balancing your body. If you ignore this group of muscles you not only get an imbalanced body with strong legs and tiny gluts (which will look weird), but also you risk back and knee injuries.




The calves can be trained by different calves extension machines from all positions. Basically what you are trying to do is raising your body or the weight with your toes. In the following video Phil Heath trains his calves and hams in one session.




How to program your workout?

Now that you know the moves you need to fit them properly in your workout in a way that gives you the maximum results with the minimum injuries possible. It's hard though to give a training program without examining your body and training with you for a while, or if you get an specialist customize a workout for your body.

==> It's highly recommended to get a customized workout. Click here to get one done for you.

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