Leg training is often met with either delight or anguish, but however you look at it it's a crucial part of developing a well rounded, full functioning body.
Here are my top exercises for training legs and how you might want to structure your leg workouts:
Protect yourself
Before any heavy lifting it's a good idea to not only warm up on a bit of cardio equipment, but also do one or two exercises to strengthen up your abducting and adducting muscles. These are the muscles with push your legs out and in.
Start off with exercises like Hip Abduction Machine, Hip Adduction Machine, Lateral Banded Walks or Banded Glute Bridges.
Now we're ready, it's time for the heavy stuff!
Exercises like Squats, Deadlifts and Hip Thrusts are all great ways to start a workout off. Find a variation of these exercises and work on progressing the weights up week on week.
After doing a choice of probably two of these we're going to want to get in some single leg work in the form of lunges, sled pushes and split squats. Single leg work is brilliant for evening out your 'strong' and your 'weak' side and it works the muscles really well.
After that we can do some more isolation work and target specific muscles such as Leg Extensions and Sissy Squats for the quads, Machine Hamstring Curls and Nordic Hamstring Curls for the hamstrings (Surprise haha), Banded Abductions and Kickbacks for the glutes and Calf Raises for the calves.
Working through this system allows us to hit different rep ranges on different exercises to. A general rule of thumb - the more muscles and joints are used the heavier the weight and the lower the reps!
Bigger exercises like Squats and Deadlifts can command a rep range of 6-10, 'medium' exercises like lunges and nordic hamstring curls can be done with a 8-12 range and the isolation exercises can be 12 reps plus.
If you have any questions about leg training or want to step things up and get some help then email adam@acmfit.com for details on Personal Training, Online Coaching and Programmes.
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