Leg Exercises to Build
Strong and Muscular Legs

Leg exercises are vital to any effective weight lifting program. Leg training is what separates the true alpha males from the pre-pubescant, high voiced and limp writsted girly men! End of story. **Pounds Chest**

Okay, okay..maybe that was a bit too harsh and just slightly exagerated. But you get my point...

...Leg exercises are important!

The legs are easily the most ignored of all muscle groups. Those who ignore their legs tend to have some creative excuses and rationalizations for not doing so.

But the real reason clear; that is, leg exercises can be painful. Unfortunately, there's now way around this, except to grab your nuts and man up.

It can really suck in the short run, but the long-term results are more than worth it. And let's not forget the benefit of experiencing an endorphin rush following an intense lower body workout.

And who knows - Maybe it'll turn out that you're one of the few "freaks" who absolutely love everything about leg workouts.

Not only does this leg training guide show you the best lower body exercises, but it also teaches you proper technique and helps you find your optimal leg workout approach.

The Importance of Training with Leg Exercises

Leg Training Benefits. Leg exercises are an essential component of any serious weight lifting routine for the following reasons:

• Run Faster & Jump Higher. Performing weight lifting exercises for your legs will develop explosive lower body power. Watch your sprinting speed and jumping ability dramatically improve as your weights on the major leg exercises increase. This is an irreplacable advantage for competitive athletes. But even as a non-competitive athlete, I find it fun to be able to jump up and hang on a basketball rim when I'm under 6 feet and over 200 lbs (white men can jump!).
• Big Wheels. Enhanced performance benefits are just the beginning; you can also develop an impressive pair of muscular "wheels." Although generally underrated, well-developed legs are essential to a symmetrical and aesthetically appealing physique (just ask Arnold). The only downside to bigger and better upper leg muscles is that you'll have to buy new pants (or you could be frugal and embrace the tight jeans fad! :-/ )
• Gain Muscle Mass...Everywhere! You are essentially working the entire body when performing a set of a compound lower body exercise. Take the squat, leg press or deadlift exercises for example; just think of how many muscles you're contracting throughout your body, other than your legs. Even if they are only being isometrically contracted (i.e. flexed but not moving), these other muscle groups recieve enough muscle fiber stimulation for enhanced size and strength development.
• Prevent TPLS. An epidemic has been spreading rapidly through gyms, worldwide. TLPS is a serious condition known as Tooth-Pick Leg Syndrome. In medical terms, it occurs when your upper body muscles make your legs appear as itty-bitty twigs in comparison. Luckily, breakthroughs have shown leg exercises to be an effective vaccine and cure for this debiltating condition. ;-P
• Chicks Dig Squat Butt. 'Nuff said!...

Excuses, excuses...

From my eloquent explanations about the benefits of leg training, the advantages of leg exercises should be blindingly obvious. But even so, many trainees choose to skip leg training altogether.

Among the endless reasons excuses for avoiding leg exercises, here are some of the most amusing ones that I've heard of:

• "I already workout my legs when I run."
• "Nobody even sees your legs!"
• "Squatting is bad for your knees."
• "Deadlifting is bad for your back."
• "...but isn't the squat rack for bicep curls?"

But since you've read this far, I'm assuming you're past all that non-sense... Or you're ready to change past habits and are ready to learn to love leg exercises!...

...So let's start with a quick leg muscle anatomy lesson so we can best understand how to train the legs for maximum results...

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Leg Anatomy 101

Let's talk about the leg anatomy. This will give you a better perspective for deciding how to optimally train your upper leg muscles.

• Note that the upper legs include the glutes, thighs and other smaller leg muscles. It however does not include the calves. If you're interested, see the calf anatomy and calf exercises here.

Function of the Leg Muscles

The upper legs are a large and complex group of muscles, which are interconnected with the knee and hip joints. This high level of complexity is necessary for all of the movement done using with the lower body muscles...

...We can move and rotate our legs and pelvis in any direction, and through a large range of motion. Thus we have the ability (or potential ability) for diverse movements such as squats, running, doing the splits, performing acrobatics, hula dancing and more.

Quadriceps (AKA "Quads")

The quadriceps are the prominent leg muscles that make up the front of your thigh. The quads' most essential role is knee extension, which entails straightening your leg from a bent-leg position. Jumping is a perfect example of knee extension.

It's secondary purpose is hip flexion, which refers to the movement of bringing your thighs or knees towards your chest. A hip flexion example is the knee-ing strike perfomed in MMA.

Hamstrings (AKA "Hams" or "Hammies")

The hamstring muscle group makes up the back of the thigh. The functions of these leg muscles are the exact opposite of those of the quadriceps. Their primary hamstrings role is knee flexion, which is characterized by curling your leg backward as if you're trying to kick your ass with your heel.

The second basic funtion of the hamstring muscle group is hip extension. This is most easily displayed by the "pelvic thrust" motion [Insert your own joke here].

Glutes/Gluteal Muscles (AKA "Butt," etc...)

The gluteal muscles include the gluteus maximus, medius and minimus. The glutes are powerful muscles, whose role is hip extension and adduction. As explained directly above, hip extension is characterized by either moving your hips forwards, or bringing your leg backwards.

Abduction constitutes sideways motion of moving your leg away from your body. This can be experienced when performing an outward sweeping motion with one of your legs.

Hip Abductors (AKA "Outter Thighs")

The hip abductors are located on the outter thigh area of your leg muscle. And as you might have guessed, this muscle group's function is abduction - in conjunction with the glutes (see above).

Hip Adductors (AKA "Inner Thighs")

The hip adductors are to hip abductors as the quads are to the hams; they are essentially opposites. While the abductors work to move the leg outward, the abductors work to bring the leg inwards. Also known as the inner thighs, the easiest way to "feel" your adductors working is by squeezing your legs together and flexing.

Hip Flexors

The hip flexors are a group of muscles in the upper-thigh to frontal-hip area. Their name gives away their purpose: hip flexion. As explained in the quadriceps subsection, hip flexion is demonstrated by lifting your knee or leg up towards your chest (or lowering chest towards legs).

People who do too much sitting (i.e. most people in developed nations) have flexibility or pain issues due to shortened and inflexible hip flexors. The solution? The short answer is to stretch the hip flexors more and take breaks when sitting for long periods.

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The Best Leg Exercises

Top 5 Leg Exercises. Here's my top 5 pick for the most effective leg exercises:

1. Squats
2. Deadlifts
3. Dumbbell Lunges
4. Step Ups
5. Leg Press

1. Squats

How To Perform The Squat Exercise. Squats are relatively straight-forward. Start by placing a barbell in a squat or power rack at about shoulder height. Get under the bar and rest it upon your upper traps muscles. Hoist it up and over the rack pins and take a step back. Stand with feet shoulder width apart, toes pointed outwards and head facing forwards. Squat downwards until your thighs are at least parallel to the ground, and squat upwards until you're fully upright. For more tips, see how to squat.

The Benefits of Squats. Squats are considered by many to be the most effective of all leg exercises, which is why it captured the number 1 ranking! The squats target the quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes. However, this massively popular leg exercise is truly a full body workout. The squat exercise enables you to axially load the entire skelatal structure with maximal weight. This means that you are putting heavy compressional force through the center of your body; thus allowing you to optimally stimulate muscle and strength development as well as create exceptionally dense bones.

2. Deadlifts

How To Perform Deadlifts. Begin with a loaded barbell on the ground. Stand in front of the barbell so that it is directly above the middle of your feet. Your feet should be about shoulder distance apart with toes out. Bend over at the waist and grab the bar with both hands. Your arms should be just outside of your knees. Put your chest out and have your head facing forwards with your back straight and arms fully extended. Your hips should be as high as possible without bending your back or lowering your chest. Pull! Don't drop your hips, and keep the bar close to your body the whole time. Lift until you're standing. Now go in reverse and carefully lower the weight back to the floor. For more tips, see deadlift form

The Benefits of the Deadlift Exercise. Deadlifts are another top-of-the-line leg exercise. Much like squats, deadlifts work out more than just your leg muscles; they're a full body exercise that hits everything from your hams, glutes and quads to your forearms, back, traps, and more! Since you are utilizing all of these body parts and taking advantage of leveraged body mechanics, you are able to swiftly pick up heroic amounts of weight off the ground. If you haven't started doing the deadlift exercise, then you can expect fast and consistent strength gains on this and your other lifts - once you start.

3. Dumbbell Lunges

How To Perform Dumbbell Lunges. Start with a dumbbell in each hand and arms extended. Keep your chest out, eyes forward and feet about shoulder width apart. Take a step forward, ensuring that your heel is hits the ground first. Lower yourself in a controlled manner by bending your rear leg at the knee. Stop lowering once your knee is barely touching the ground. Your knee should never go past your toes. Maintain an upright torso (perpendicular to the floor) the entire time. For more tips, see lunge exercise.

The Benefits of the Dumbbell Lunge Exercise. Lunges are a fundamental leg exercise that will benefit you, regardless of your goals. While squats and deadlifts are best for pure strength and muscle building purposes, they lack the benfits unilateral exercises such as lunges. Unilateral exercises train one side of your body separately from the other side. As you can imagine, training on side at a time with lunges will vastly improve your balance and agility. But the best advantage is that you can "even out" strength and muscle imbalances by independently training your weak side. In effect, this can improve your squat and deadlift weights by eliminating the bottleneck, or weakest link, that's holding back progress.

4. Step Ups

How To Perform Step Ups. Stand in front of a bench so that you are facing the long side. With dumbbells in hand, raise a knee up to and upon the top of the bench. As if you are trying to climb a very tall step, extend your knee and hips until you are standing on the bench with both feet. Reverse the motion by stepping backwards, leading with the second leg. Perform this from the beginning with the opposite side to complete a full rep. For more tips, see barbell step ups.

The Benefits of the Step Up Exercise. Step ups are a profoundly effective leg exercise, especially for athletes. Like lunges, the step ups exercise is a unilateral movement with benefits of better balance and symmetry because you train each leg separately. But step ups take it a step further (no pun) than lunges; they allow you to develop more power because of a greater range of motion as well as the extra force and velocity required to successfully execute correct form. This exercise also mimmics real-life jumping and sprinting motions, which means this is a no-brainer for athletes.

5. Leg Press

How to Perform the Leg Press Exercise. Sit down on the leg press machine. Put your legs up and place your feet about shoulder width apart on the pressing platform. With your butt on the seat pad and your back firmly pressed against the back support, push the weight up and release the safety handles. Grip the normal handles tightly, lower the weight slowly, then explode upwards once your knee joint reaches 90° (go deeper if possible). For more tips, see leg press tips.

The Benefits of the Leg Press Exercise. The leg press exercise is a machine exercise, that is great for your upper legs, especially your quadriceps. This exercise is quite similar to the squat exercise. The main differences are that you're sitting down with your hips and back stationary, while your feet are moving; whereas with squats, your hips and back are in motion and your feet are stationary. So the drawbacks are that you don't get the full body workout that you'd get with squats and you miss out on the stabilizer and balance benefits. However, the leg press still lets you to use big-boy weight so you can gain muscle mass and build strength in your lower body.

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Training & Technique Tips for All Leg Exercises

Although each leg exercise is unique, they have many aspects in common with eachother. I'll share some technique and training tips that will allow you to get the most out of your leg exercises.

Pysche Yourself Up. I don't care how you get amped up. Just do it. When I used to workout in my basement with my friend, we would take turns getting slapped in the back of the head, punched in the abs and swatted across the back - while blasting some melodic tunes and exchanging kind words of encouragement - to get ready for heavy deadlifts (don't worry, nobody got hurt). It worked like magic. I know that method isn't too practical or desirable for most (especially in public gyms!). However, finding a way to get your adrenaline to flow makes a very noticable difference in your intensity effort of your lift and your actual strength. Consider these other suggestions...

• Change Your Attitude. Embrace the pain with end in mind. Your perception of, and attitude towards a difficult objective like intense leg exercises, is the most important part of completeing the objective with emphasis. If you're one of the many people who loathe leg training, try to reframe it as a challenge. This way, you will focus more on pushing yourself, instead of focusing on the fact that you hate doing it.
• Workout Music. This is a must-have in my opinion. I didn't have an iPod when I first began working out and I was too lazy to burn a CD. But it made an undeniable difference when I finally did add music to my workouts, especially during leg exericses. So bring your mp3 player, turn it up and get into the zone with whatever music gets you hyphy. It helps if you make a workout playlist beforehand.
• Visualize Success. Visualizing success helps with achieving damn near any goal, including the ability to intensely power through a set of bone-crushingly heavy squats (or your leg exercise of choice). I try to do this before and during the set. Play out the scene in your head - Imagine how the exercise will look, feel and sound when you are successfully performing it? Think of details: How do you appear when perfectly executing the technique, how quickly do you explode upwards, what does the resistance feel like against your body?
• Think About Your Arch Nemesis. Do you have an enemy? A person, a thing or a situation that's been bothering you lately? Well this is a healthy time to get angry about it. Put all that negative energy to good use during intense leg exercises. You tend have better workouts when you're pissed off, but the endorphin release makes you feel like a giggly schoolgirl when you're finished.
• Meditate & Clear Your Mind. You don't have to be a Buddhist Monk to do this; try focus your mind to clear all distractions. Don't think about the lift at all. Keep this state before and during the lift, and you'll be done before you know it.
• Move Around. Pace around your area, jump up and down - whatever. This helps you keep blood flowing and can be surprisingly helpful for gaining a focus. Some people might prefer to get their game-face on, while standing up or sitting down; but you'll often see Powerlifters or Olympic weightlifters pace around the floor right before performing a lift.

Now, that I've covered the psychological aspect. I'll give some more general tips on leg exercises:

• Focus On Squats & Deadlifts. The above list of leg exercises includes several great exercises. However, in most situations, I recommend using squats and deadlifts as your primary leg exercises. That is, you should use squats and deads near the beginning of your leg training, so that you will be able to perform them at a higher intensity level.
• Learn & Use Perfect Form. "Practice makes perfect" is a lie - The saying should be "perfect practice makes perfect." Actively critique yourself even if you think everything is correct. I was too arrogant (I was 15) to do this when I first began training; I knew that technique was important, but had convinced myself that mine was flawless even though I never truly made an effort to improve it. Soon enough, I was humbled by an unpleasant lower back injury during squats, even though my form had been mostly good.
• Control The Negative Reps. This is especially important for leg exercises because of the knee and lower back involvement. As you probably know, the knee and lower back are two areas that are more vulnerable to injury. One surefire way to induce one of these injuries is by going out of control when lowering the weight. This can put too much stress on these relatively fragile body parts, and potentially sideline you for a while. Handle the weight, don't let it handle you. Lower the weight if you can't handle it.
• Breathe Properly. I'm a proponent of the Valsalva Maneuver, which is a breathing "trick" that allows you to lift more during intense leg exercises. It is something you naturally do when picking up heavy loads: Inhale before or during the negative rep, hold your breath through the positive rep and exhale when the repetition is complete. It increases the pressure in your thoracic cavity (the area in your heart lung region), which supports and protects your spinal column. In addition, it allows for a short burst of strength.

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The Best Leg Workout Approach for You

You need a weight lifting routine with a training approach that correctly matches up to you and your goals... That is of course, if you want to experience optimal results with your leg exercises.

There are various important factors to consider when trying to choose or develop the best leg workout method. However, your experience level is the most important deciding factor for discovering your best approach...

...And ever-so-conveniently, I've put together a leg workouts guide that takes you by the hand and shows you the best type of leg workouts for you. It does this by taking the most important personal factors into consideration. (The link for this is coming soon - thanks for waiting!)

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