How to pump up your legs

Basic principles of training

The main training method for pumping up the legs is a basic load of a complex format and the involvement of the maximum number of joints. Due to the large area and volume occupied, only such a load can provide a strength stimulus for subsequent progress.

Isolating leg flexions, extensions or abductions will not reveal their strength potential, and a natural athlete without doping "grows" only when he becomes stronger during training. Therefore, it is necessary to increase the weight of the weights in basic movements. Increasing the weight in isolating ones seems to be hardly possible due to the participation of a small number of muscles and a weak signal from the central nervous system.

Train your leg muscles to work together. Your glutes, quads, hamstrings, calves, and even your anterior tibialis should all work together. This is the only way to ensure fast and significant progress.

Forget the instructions of athletes from YouTube. All their stories about 20 squats, hundreds of leg extensions and curls in the simulator are nothing more than half-truths from athletes on doping. Steroids are prohibited by law, which does not allow them to come out of the shadows. Their advice only helps the same athletes on doping. We are with you - for healthy fitness, and for this you do not need hundreds of isolation movements.

Exercises for leg muscles

It is a well-known fact: if you want to pump up your legs, you need to squat with a barbell on your shoulders . In reality, this is true, but this exercise has very complex biomechanics and it takes several months to learn, and some even have to relearn it for more than six months. Conventionally, without squats you cannot build huge legs, but in practice, people first need to learn how to do them correctly. Otherwise, there will be no sense in such pseudo-squats, which are more like “torso bending”.

The most productive exercises:

Squats with a barbell on the shoulders ;
Front squats;
Deadlift;
Deadlift ;
Sprinting at maximum intensity;
Barbell snatch.

From a biomechanical standpoint, learning the proper technique for deadlifts and deadlifts is easier than learning the proper technique for squats with a barbell on your shoulders. So pay attention to these lifts. We recommend doing them with moderate weights and focusing on technique to avoid injury.

Sprinting is rightfully considered an excellent exercise for building leg muscles. Maximum acceleration involves all human skeletal muscles. This movement is the most natural and safe due to the evolutionary factor. Previously, it was extremely important for a human hunter to be able to catch up with his prey. Therefore, evolution gave us strong muscles of the back and front of the thigh. When running, they are activated together, that is, two antagonists work, which spends a record amount of energy and contributes to stress, which is subsequently suppressed by supercompensation under the right conditions.

Mistakes in Leg Training

It is possible to pump up your legs only if there are no gross methodological errors. Let's list the most common ones:

Working weight

The desire to take a record weight in squats and various deadlifts will not only not give the desired result, but will also contribute to various injuries, including osteochondrosis and protrusions. Never work to strength failure in such movements as deadlift or squat.

Technique of execution

Without the correct technique, you will not be able to load the necessary muscle groups. Also, without mastering this point, the risk of injury increases.

Load isolation

Numerous swings, bends and extensions of the isolation format do not create significant stress for the leg muscles. This is a whole set of skeletal muscles that have a huge power potential, and various movements of this format cannot globally affect the legs. The exception is the increased level of androgens due to their exogenous intramuscular or oral administration using steroids of various formats.

A pure athlete should not waste time on such exercises. They do not build leg muscles and do not give "relief".

How to pump up your legs correctly

Choose a few comfortable exercises. Comfort means comfort when performing. If the skeleton is comfortable, then the levers and their length are suitable for you, as a result of which it will be easier to master the technique. In parallel with this, learn the correct squat technique with an empty bar, or even without it. Teach the central nervous system the only correct motor stereotype.

Over time, add squats and slowly but surely increase the working weight. Not every workout, but every micro-cycle. Do not chase the working weight, and do not work to excessive failure. The muscles of the legs, due to the large area they occupy, respond well to the total tonnage of the load, and not to peak "failure".

Of course, the myths about squats increasing testosterone remain myths, but there is a grain of truth here. Thanks to squats, you can create a load for all body systems, to which it will respond with adaptation and subsequent progress due to supercompensation.