Generally speaking, while working out the primary concern of bodybuilding is to develop a toned upper body, to the extent that aspiring bodybuilders sometimes forget to pay much attention to their legs. And if they do train legs, it is pretty much the bare minimum and a half-willed effort – leg press and leg curls, for example. Sometimes we need to consider home leg exercises to get some extra reps outside of a gym.
Many beginners focus so much on a toned set of abs or bowling ball shoulders, that they skip out on leg day and forget to include their squats and deads throughout the week. This greatly affects the symmetry of the body. So to obtain that perfect physique you dream about, you will need to include leg workouts too.
For today we will focus mainly on home leg exercises and primarily use only body weight.
Are you experiencing unpleasant pain in the knee while training your legs? In this article, we are going to tell you how to protect your knees from any unpleasant injuries as they are very common.
Your legs are one of the most important parts of your body. As athletes and/or gym rats, we must train our legs regularly, even though it can be quite unpleasant at times. Training legs is not always fun, and is sometimes a bit painful, causing many beginners and even novice athletes to neglect them. Personally, I love deadlift day, I don’t care much for squat day, and I abhor lunge day for the reasons mentioned above.
Today we will share some tips and tricks of the workout trade, used by coaches and athletes that you can use to protect your knees from inflammation and injury.
There are many different lifts that a weightlifter can do to increase their strength, speed, and power. All kind of weightlifting is great for your body, but I prefer to not waste time in the gym lifting with tunnel vision, going from machine to machine and seeing little results from my hard work. This is why it is important to learn how to squat!
Instead, I would rather do 3-4 exercises with maximal intensity to wipe out my whole body in order to reap a maximal anabolic effect. The most well known and most dreaded of these exercises is the squat.
Rules to Remember When Performing a Squat
Keep the lower back straight and mostly flat; do not round your back!
Keep knees pointing out slightly, do not let them creep inwards as you push yourself up.
The bar should rest on the upper trap muscles and the rear heads of the shoulders.
Push from your glutes (butt), not your knees; your hips should raise first and everything else should raise with them.
Fill your stomach with air before descending and keep it tight with your chest out while pushing up.
Push up with your eyes focused 30-45 degrees above normal eye level.
Try to keep your knees behind your toes to avoid injury.
One of the endless fitness debates is the – “squat rack vs. Smith machine.” Along with “wrist wraps or not,” and “squat belt or not”, those are the two topics of conversation bound to cause a serious battle of opinions between gym rats.Â
As you might guess, diving into both of these topics will take a ton of time so we will spare you the wrist wraps debacle and squat belt conundrum, and just head on to discussing the squat rack vs. the smith machine. In this article, we will go over the two types of fitness equipment, what they are good for, and why you should consider using one or the other, depending on your training goals.Â
So let’s not keep you waiting any longer and dive straight into the topic.Â
The hamstrings are a big muscle group located in the posterior thigh region of the human body. Many people tend to only perform static stretches on them, which has its benefits, however, you need to incorporate some sort of resistance training like bodyweight hamstring exercises to get them strong and flexible.
Your hamstrings play an essential role in various activities, such as walking, running, and jumping. Bodyweight exercises are an excellent way to strengthen your hamstring muscles without the need for special equipment.
This article will go over the best bodyweight hamstrings exercises and some of their benefits.
The calves are a serious problem area for most bodybuilders. You can win or lose a contest depending on whether or not you have put some time into building thick slabs of beef on the back of your legs. Women tend to have calf issues as well; many are sporting the dreaded “cankles”. Both sexes often suffer from skinny little twiggy leg syndrome, sometimes known as “bird legs”. What do these folks have in common? They are probably all making the same calf training mistakes day to day, week to week. So how can we fix it?
To build marvelous calves, you have to put time into training them frequently and from a variety of angles. First and foremost, you can’t make the following 6 calf training mistakes and also hope to build world-class wheels. Train your legs right and you will prosper. Make too many mistakes and they will continue to lag.
Your legs are the foundation of your physique. With their bulging tear drops, incision-like cuts, and shredded striations, prize leg development can win you a contest. Lagging leg development can also lose you a contest. Additionally, having strong legs makes it that much easier to develop a strong upper body. Here are 6 mistakes most athletes make when training their legs. These tips apply both to active bodybuilders and newbies, so pay attention!
The Top 6 Leg Training Mistakes
Not Training Legs At All
A lot of people completely avoid leg training. Why? Personally, I find it hard to understand. But there’s obviously a reason why they do; theories are they already have some preconceived notion that their legs are developed beyond what they are in actuality, or they see leg training as “hard”.
It’s true that leg training can be painful, and you generally are sore afterwards, but many bodybuilders grow to love that soreness, as with other muscles. Avoiding leg training is a critical mistake, and you can’t build a house without a foundation.
Here is a brilliant leg training article from the team at JackedPack. If you don’t know, JackedPack is a membership subscription service that sends you a monthly box of the samples of the best in sports nutrition supplements.
You can subscribe for 50% off your first month by using the coupon code SWOLE at checkout.
One of the best feelings in the world is when someone says to you, “Oh my gosh, are those Giant Sequoias or are those your legs?” We hope that all JackedPack members and non-members alike are able to experience the satisfaction and benefits of leg strength and size, and that’s why we’ve dedicated this post to giving our lower extremities the attention they deserve. We want everybody to be squatting school buses and deadlifting beached wales back into the ocean. We have included a stellar legs day workout that incorporates some awesome exercises that are sure to have people singing Sir Mix-A-Lot every time you walk in a room.
I get plenty of questions in various comments throughout the website, but I also get comments and questions via the Project Swole Contact Form.
Generally I address those questions through e-mail, but often I do not have the time to reply to each and every question personally.
From now on I want to take a more proactive approach to answering Your Health Questions by posting them separately in the blog. This way we can be sure that everyone benefits from the Q & A.
Kalee wrote:
I have shin splints right now so I can’t run or bike or anything but lift weights while sitting and do core exercises… unless you can think of anything that I could do for cardio that wouldn’t require me to use my legs. What exercises [should I use] until my shin splints heal? Thanks!
Response:
If you haven’t managed to avoid shin splints, then it is obvious that you haven’t read and understood my article about How to Avoid Shins Splints, but first, if you haven’t already, you should take a couple minutes to understand What Are Shin Splints. Once you’ve become well versed on shin splints, you can now read about how heal or treat shin splints. Let’s get this problem under control so you can get back to training.
Isn’t it obvious that we wouldn’t have to know how to recover from shin splints if we could avoid them in the first place? In order to understand how to avoid shin splints, we must first understand What Are Shin Splints. Then we can better understand how to proactively avoid them. We need to learn more about who gets shin splints, how to properly warm up and stretch the lower leg, and finally we need a method of strengthening those muscles. Assuming we can’t avoid shin splints, we will need to understand How to Treat Shin Splints.
Now, let’s examine the best ways to avoid shin splints by first understanding who is in danger of developing them.
Who Gets Shin Splints?
Athletes, weekend warriors, and even military recruits often experience shin splints, especially at the beginning of the season. Sometimes treatment can be as simple as changing to softer running surface or adding extra arch support to shoes to redistribute the stress. Active rest is often recommended by doctors as a primary treatment. This means that a runner should take up non-impact exercises such as swimming or biking, which gives the injured areas time to heal, but also maintains the cardiovascular benefits of exercise.
It is also believed that people with misalignment often develop problems such as shin splints. Misalignment to the knee, pelvis, ankle, neck, and spine, can result in abnormal posture and abnormal ROM at different joints, which causes excessive wear and tear on bones, joints, and muscles.
A single vertical jump for maximum height is one of the most intense exercises you can do.
Why? Because it requires you to utilize your entire lower body chain in a maximal effort contraction, to produce a maximal amount of force in a split second.
The important aspects of training to work on, to increase your vertical leap include:
Squatting strength – Maximal leg strength transfers directly to a vertical jump. A strong 1 rep max = a big jump.
Squatting speed – The faster you can squat, the more power you can generate, the higher you can jump.
Squatting power – Tied in directly with speed and strength, squat heavier and squat faster and you will jump higher.
Acceleration – You want to continue accelerating out of the hole all the way through the top of your jump.
Single leg strength – To eliminate strength imbalances and to improve neuromuscular coordination, train your legs individually.
Calf strength – Your calves are used at the end of the jump, so max calf strength can mean an extra inch on your vert.
Sprint speed – Sprinting trains the Type-II Fast Twitch muscle fibers, which are what you need to attain your highest jump. Acceleration applies here as well.
Hip drive – Your hips are responsible for a significant portion of jumping power from a parallel squat position to standing.
Glute activation – Your glutes are responsible for driving you out of the hole at the bottom of a squat or jump.
