Leg workout for mass/strength

[Samuel Carr]

This isn't a very gymnastic based question but I trust this forum more than bodybuilding ones so I'm gonna just put it out there. I've been doing wods with great progress and I'm progressing with the leg workouts, but seeing as I'm not a competitive gymnast or anything, I'm getting annoyed by the size gains I'm getting on upper body but my legs are still very thin and I want to change that.

I just joined a crossfit gym so I can use weights and I've just starting doing things like box squats and dead lifts conventionally and with a sumo stance but I don't know of any other good leg exercises besides the wod ones that would be good since I've never used weights before. Can anyone recommend a routine or exercises for me to do 1 or 2x per week that would develop strength and some size (not a whole lot)?

*I should also mention that I will continue do a leg wod in the morning when it comes up and then a leg program in the gym later in the day and also on an off day like wednesday or saturday.

[Blairbob]

For lower body, a few options are:

standard 5x5. You could rotate this from Front Squats, Back Squats, and Deadlifts. I would not use the Overhead Squat. Speed/Power work such as Sprints/Broad jumps/Plyo.

531 for Lower Body, meaning Squat and DL days, 1 day each a week with assistance. Assistance on Squat days could be Front Squat and Split Squats/Bulgarian Split Squat with rear leg elevated, maybe GoodMornings and SLS. For DL days, use Stiff leg DL, GluteHam, 1 leg DL/King DL.

As a WU to the strength lifts on those days, use either Power Cleans or 1 arm DB Snatch (or 2 arm DB Clean) or KB swings. You could use a KB snatch/clean but then you have to deal with the bell banging on the forearm and it's just not worth it IMO.

Sprints/Broad Jumps or another idea for speed work instead of the cleans/snatch/swings. Just for iteration, Plyo work could be used instead but I am wary of using it on concrete/stall mats in a CF gym vs doing it on a gymnastics sprung floor.

Sumo DL is more quad specific than a regular DL. I'm not a huge fan of Sumo DL but it might be more useful as a mass builder.

Another option is to just do OlympicLift training revolving around cleans, snatches, jerks and squatting.

[Daniel Burnham]

Probably the simplest and most effective exercise you could add is full depth back squats twice a week with at least one day of rest between them. I prefer to do them for 3 sets with 5 reps per set since 5x5 has always resulted in too much volume after a few weeks.

Using 3x5 you can just go up about 5 pounds per workout if you haven't squatted before. Start the weight a little lower so you don't over do it in the beginning. This is the method used in Rippetoe's starting strength. Its highly effective for building strength and mass on people who are new to squatting. After doing this for a few months you will probably stall in weight and resetting won't help. At that time I would look into doing 5x5 or a program like Wendler's.

If you want a little more mass, after a couple of weeks you could start adding a pause in the bottom of the squat and slowing the reps down.

[seiyafan]

Frog jumps, 5x10, the ultimate thigh buster!

[Larry Roseman]

Talking specifically about leg growth, the leg press is highly regarded for this within bodybuilding circles.

You *may* not be able to get the personally beneficial tension and time *specifically* focused on the legs through squats and deadlifts, depending on that range of motion that may be imposed by your body structure, as well as your back and grip strength.

I am *not saying* that deadlifts and squats are not superior overall, great as mass builders or fantastic for the lower kinetic chain and all that. However since you asked in bodybuilding terms, I'm answering you in those. Whether you have the ability

to perform a leg press at the CF gym is another story

Also calf raises, sitting and standing. Notoriously difficult to grow the calfs (calves?).

[Samuel Carr]

  Blairbob said:

Sumo DL is more quad specific than a regular DL. I'm not a huge fan of Sumo DL but it might be more useful as a mass builder.

Another option is to just do OlympicLift training revolving around cleans, snatches, jerks and squatting.

I'm pretty sure the sumo DL is more hamstring and glute specific.... I originally joined the gym to learn and use the olympic lifts, but I've decided to work on the squat and deadlift for now until I can save some money to hire one of the trainers to teach me the o lifts since I want to make sure I do them right.

  burnhamd said:

Probably the simplest and most effective exercise you could add is full depth back squats twice a week with at least one day of rest between them. I prefer to do them for 3 sets with 5 reps per set since 5x5 has always resulted in too much volume after a few weeks.

Soungs good. I was trying to implement these but I can't find anywhere that details proper form for them and the guy who taught me box squats and deadlifts dismissed these as causing too much stress on the knees. When I told him they're shown to build knee strength and structural balance his response was that they do load the knees, but they don't make them stronger, just break them down. But then again he is a competitive powelifter only concerned with getting the most weight one the bar. He doesn't seem to care about mobility and balance.

  FutureisNow said:

Talking specifically about leg growth, the leg press is highly regarded for this within bodybuilding circles.

Also calf raises, sitting and standing. Notoriously difficult to grow the calfs (calves?).

Thanks I'm pretty sure I saw a leg press I'll check it out. And yeah my calves are the most frustrating body part for me. I have a plan to hopefully change that tho.

[Blairbob]

Well, you could with squats just modifying load and tempo but yes leg press could be better for hypertrophy since you can just load it up. However, it is a huge pain in the butt loading and deloading it. Deloading over 20 plates starts to become it's own workout.

[Blairbob]

Element, I have read that some people's calves differ in how they insert and thus how they appear.

http://primallifter.com/comparing-sumo-and-conventional-deadlifts/

If you ask most PL, they will have you box squat, possibly pull sumo besides use very wide stances. Ask an olympic lifter how to squat and they'll tell you to high bar back squat and front squat. Rip's crowd uses his hybrid form but generally don't give a damn about squatting in a squat suit.

Calves require lots of speed work. Many people don't really do any speed work with them and a lot of gymgoers don't squat a lot or nearly enough in their typical programming. This can be simple as most sports on your feet a lot, especially if they are start and stop. Olympic Lifts cover this as well.

531 Boring but Big might be a decent hypertrophy for you. Besides the standard 531 format, there is extra sets of 10 (5x10, I think) and accessory work. I never tried it but who knows maybe one day I will (not on my priority list now).

[Daniel Burnham]

  Quote

Soungs good. I was trying to implement these but I can't find anywhere that details proper form for them and the guy who taught me box squats and deadlifts dismissed these as causing too much stress on the knees. When I told him they're shown to build knee strength and structural balance his response was that they do load the knees, but they don't make them stronger, just break them down. But then again he is a competitive powelifter only concerned with getting the most weight one the bar. He doesn't seem to care about mobility and balance.

I won't get too much discussion on the form and knee stress here because there are several sources that describe them in much greater detail.

Stronglifts has a good overview here http://stronglifts.com/how-to-squat-with-proper-technique-fix-common-problems/

And a similar one on the starting strength wiki http://startingstrength.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ:The_Lifts

Both the low bar or high bar squat will get you bigger legs though the high bar will activate your quads some more and is usually considered a little easier to perform with correct form

A good overview on both back squat forms is here

http://www.70sbig.com/blog/2012/01/low-bar-vs-high-bar-squatting/

I also a agree that leg press may give greater hypertrophy big I would suggest the squat for the loading problem blairbob gave above and the much greater strength increase.

[Blairbob]

Yes, it also depends on Leg Press machines. Machines with only 1 rail to load on can only load up between 4-600lbs. Which was fine for when I would do one leg squats or long sets with two legs or calf work but poor for working maximal strength sets (to note when I used a leg press, I knew virtually nothing of any strength programming). These would be ok if said gym had 100lb plates instead of 45-50lb plates.

Again, fine as accessory assistance hypertrophy work. Maybe if you had a weak back, wherein I would probably focus on that instead of leg hypertrophy.

[Michael Miskelly]

Apologies for jumping in your thread.

What would you guys recommend for someone without access to weights? I have dumbells and about 48kg of different weight plates which I only use for weighted dips/pulls etc. I have somewhere to do GHR's and can do SLS so would I just keep adding weight to my SLS and introducing tempo to the GHR's. I do sprints and plyometric stuff too but mainly for conditioning.

[Blairbob]

Just use SLS instead. Whether you want to do it as a "pistol" or off a box with the free leg hanging is up to you (it can be a pain getting on top of a box with weight).

Another SLS version has the free leg propped up behind you on a box/bench etc. Basically one of Mike Boyle's RearLegElevatedSplitSquat or Bulgarian SplitSquat. I liked using this with the girls and we also did a version (at first unweighted) that was a side to side hopping version.

[Larry Roseman]

  Blairbob said:

Yes, it also depends on Leg Press machines. Machines with only 1 rail to load on can only load up between 4-600lbs. Which was fine for when I would do one leg squats or long sets with two legs or calf work but poor for working maximal strength sets (to note when I used a leg press, I knew virtually nothing of any strength programming). These would be ok if said gym had 100lb plates instead of 45-50lb plates.

Again, fine as accessory assistance hypertrophy work. Maybe if you had a weak back, wherein I would probably focus on that instead of leg hypertrophy.

I'd agree with that Bob ... being able to use 600 pounds isn't too bad a problem to have though

[Blairbob]

Well, it sorta feels great. It's an ego booster. But you start to learn something is wrong when your Back SQ is 350ish and your LegPress is 1200ish.

and it's such a pain to rack and derack.

So it becomes like curling in the mirror. Fun, but pointless for the most part.

[Samuel Carr]

Thanks for all the good info here. I haven't had time to read about the 531 Boring But Big program yet, but the stronglifts 5x5 seems to have good results for most people from what I saw in the links Blairbob posted so I might try that too. I'm going to continue working box squats until I can get to 1" below parallel (I'm currently doing about 3" above) and then I'll start experimenting with some ATG squats starting very light.

It seems like everyone who maybe has a decent barbell squat can leg press close to 1000 lbs so I'm just going to do maybe 2 sets as a warm-up or something. Maybe do a few hypertrophy days with it.

  Blairbob said:

Calves require lots of speed work. Many people don't really do any speed work with them

Can you expand on this? I was planning on doing 3x8 for standing and seated calf raises and toe raises early in the week and then doing 3x15 later in the week for these exercises. What do you mean by lots of speed work tho?

[Daniel Burnham]

So basically the wendler 5/3/1 is an intermediate workout plan that changes intensity and volume I've the course of 4 weeks then you go up in weight the next month. You are expected to do each major lift once a week. It is slowly professing but pretty effective over a long term.

If your lower body is as small as you say then I assume you are a beginner which means you will most likely get more gains out of a linear program (stronglifts, starting strength style). This style of training may however slightly impact your gymnastics work due to a larger strain and you may notice greater fatigue. However these stressors can also be good at promoting whole body growth (your arms get stronger when you squat and exercise them vs just focusing on arms). This is due to a larger

recovery response to the larger stress. there are a lot of factors I won't get into here but this larger response makes a great deal of difference in weightliftin, but much smaller in gymnastics because of the already whole body nature of bodyweight training.

There is really no reason to wait before going to full depth squats. In fact you may even be developing inbalances by training the upper part of the squat preferentially. Also if you are going to include leg press at all I would use it as an assistance lift to the squats. In this case you should probably not try to do a linear program with leg press as it is a lot of stress on the body. The best warmups are ones that mimic the motion of the lift.

I think what blairbob is referring to with the speed work of the calves is higher content of fast twitch fibers. This means that they that greater hypertrophy will come from incorporating many rep. I've found that sprinting and jumping rope will give good hypertrophy.

[Blairbob]

Speed work refers to sprinting, jumping, and olympic lifting, tumbling, and vault can cover this as do many other sports and I guess jump rope could as well. If you spend a fair to a lot of time doing some of these sports, you're calves are bound to grow or maybe you'll just suck. Soleus and Gastroc are a mix of slow and fast twitch.

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/best_of_calves

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/cure_for_cowardly_calves

http://www.elitefitness.com/forum/weight-training-weight-lifting/charles-poliquin-calf-routine-644244.html

Take home message being is somewhere in there you have to do a lot of volume on the calves besides strength work.

[Typhoon]

"Dear reader front squat 405 8 times." Dan John When replying to a question of Dan how do I make my thighs bigger?

You want bigger legs? make them stronger with a decent amount of volume.

[Samuel Carr]

Okay so I need to just keep my workouts focused around squatting with some deadlifting too. I found a website that has 5 sample workouts for legs and I did the first 1 today and definitely felt it. They're all listed at the bottom of this http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/beginne ... -guide.htm. I'm thinking of just doing 1 of these at the beginning of the week on sunday and doing a different one each week. Then do dead lifts and back/front squats at the end of the week or after a leg wod.

[Luke Leaman]

Why not squat/deadlift AND leg press? In my experience if you want your legs to grow quickly, then you need volume. If you want strength and mass, you could try something like the following.

A1. Front Squat 5*5 120 sec rest

A2. Lying Leg Curl 5*5 120 sec rest

B1. Leg Press 4*10-12 75

B2. Good Morning 4*10-12 75

If you want to add some calves to it, reduce the sets by one and add a calf superset like:

C1. Standing Calf Raise 2-3*10-12 10

C2. Seated Calf Raise 2-3*15-20 90

For the A1 sets, you could use substitutions: Single Leg Squat, Back Squat, Trap Bar Deadlift, Deadlift, Snatch, Clean

A2: GH Raise, Seated Leg Curl, Standing Leg Curl, Arch Ups, Back Extension

B1. Single Leg Press, Hack Squat, any of the A1 substitutions

B2. SLDL, and of the A2 exercises, Swings

So there are a million ways it could be done, with the GB series, conventional lifts, power lifts, Olympic lifts

Key component for program design for this would be strength or speed lifts first, hypertrophy lifts second.

Strength:Rep ranges from 1-8

Hypertrophy: 8-20+ depending on the function of the muscle

And eat, eat, eat on your leg days

[Luke Leaman]

Also, you could use strictly GB series exercises as well. Use the hardest progressions you can for the A sets and easier progressions on the B sets.

The key concept is microtrauma, and then recover.

[Nic Branson]

Drop the leg press and do lunges instead. Just my two cent comment..

[Samuel Carr]

  LukeLeaman said:

Why not squat/deadlift AND leg press? In my experience if you want your legs to grow quickly, then you need volume. If you want strength and mass, you could try something like the following.

A1. Front Squat 5*5 120 sec rest

A2. Lying Leg Curl 5*5 120 sec rest

B1. Leg Press 4*10-12 75

B2. Good Morning 4*10-12 75

If you want to add some calves to it, reduce the sets by one and add a calf superset like:

C1. Standing Calf Raise 2-3*10-12 10

C2. Seated Calf Raise 2-3*15-20 90

Thanks LukeLeaman I just did this yesterday and it seemed to go pretty well, I'm going to keep doing it.

[Joshua Naterman]

  element3904 said:

Thanks for all the good info here. I haven't had time to read about the 531 Boring But Big program yet, but the stronglifts 5x5 seems to have good results for most people from what I saw in the links Blairbob posted so I might try that too. I'm going to continue working box squats until I can get to 1" below parallel (I'm currently doing about 3" above) and then I'll start experimenting with some ATG squats starting very light.

It seems like everyone who maybe has a decent barbell squat can leg press close to 1000 lbs so I'm just going to do maybe 2 sets as a warm-up or something. Maybe do a few hypertrophy days with it.

  Blairbob said:

Calves require lots of speed work. Many people don't really do any speed work with them

Can you expand on this? I was planning on doing 3x8 for standing and seated calf raises and toe raises early in the week and then doing 3x15 later in the week for these exercises. What do you mean by lots of speed work tho?

I have experienced the same thing with calves. Slowly adding weight to high repetition, explosive straight leg (locked knee) calf raises is the way to get those gastrocs built up. Some slow work helps too, but the explosive reps seem to be the way to go.

As an unintentional example, all of my calf size is due to running around downtown with a 25-40 lb pack on at high speeds on the balls of my feet.

[Nic Branson]

Hmm calf work. Jump rope has worked for some people who have a hard time. One other thing and please do NOT take this as a recommendation, try at your own risk:

Some traditional Muay Thai training utilizes semi truck tires. Stand on the edge where the rim would make contact facing outwards and jump. Treat it like a jump rope basically. Obviously used tires with showing steel is a bad BAD idea. Again just something I had the pleasure of being tortured with in the past.