Lagging Legs

It seems that people either have legs or they don’t and the journey for bringing up your legs is endless. Squatting, leg pressing, thousands of leg extensions and leg curls. Then you tack on advanced techniques such as extended sets and expanding TUT/TUL (Time Under Tension/Time Under Load). What is interesting is what may be missing from your leg routine that you do not see and that is where the problems lie.

Let’s look at the awfully typical workout regimen of 5 days on, 2 off. We have Chest and Triceps on Monday, Back and Biceps on Tuesday, Shoulders and Traps on Wednesday, Legs on Thursday, and Arms on Friday. This very horrid setup is enough to make any knowledgeable exercise enthusiast puke! Let us save diving into why this setup is all wrong and look at the issue at hand. We will analyze your chest workout compared to your leg workout.
Typical Chest Routine:
Barbell Flat Bench 4 sets 8-12 reps
Incline Dumbbell Bench 4 sets 8-12 reps
Decline Barbell or Dumbbell Bench 4 sets 8-12 reps
Flyes or Cable Crossovers 4 sets 12-15 reps

Typical Leg Routine:
Squats 4 sets 8-12 reps
Leg Press 4 sets 8-12 reps
Stiff Legged Deadlift 4 sets 8-12 reps
Leg Extension 4 sets 12-15 reps
Superset with
Leg Curl 4 sets 12-15 reps

I have purposely left our calves as they do not add to nor take away from the point I want to make. First, look at both routines; they appear solid and typical when you go to the gym. This may be your exact workout at that is great because this is intended to help you. In the chest workout, we’ve hit 16 total sets to HAMMER the chest. The leg routine has two parts as we are covering your quads (quadriceps) and hams (hamstrings). The hamstrings are still a decent sized muscle group especially when you compare the work they get in relation to a biceps or triceps workout (which the hamstrings are larger than your biceps). In the chest workout, we’ve managed to hit the upper, middle, lower, inner and outer chest, which seems logical, but is entirely false. If you view the anatomy of the chest, there is a pec major, pec minor, and these can be hit from different angle to load different areas of the muscle. However, an ekg reading will show you that in any chest focused variation of the bench, the entire pec still fires. Granted you can get more involvement from different portions of the chest with different angles, this does not mean to destroy your chest from multiple angles. Even the largest chest is not big enough to outweigh the work that should be placed on the MUCH larger quadriceps muscles.

In the example above, the quads get twelve sets of work. Your quads have the name quad due to being made up of four different muscles. Yet when you see people going to the gym, you will rarely hear them talking about hitting their inner quads or outer quads. A lot of people are confused as to how they can hit these different muscle groups (a simple adjustment in foot position can do the trick!).

When you lay out your routines, start analyzing the size of the muscles and that will help you determine the amount of work each muscle will require. If you can take an honest look at yourself, or have someone else with some knowledge in muscle symmetry you can determine which muscles may need a little more work. If your biceps are lagging behind your triceps, then by all means add in a little extra work to help bring them up. You could also lower the amount of work put into your triceps, but that is another topic for another day. Let’s get back to that leg routine. When designing your routine, vary your foot positioning and also use a few different forms of squats to help fully fatigue the muscles. It’s interesting that most people use 3-4 different chest variations, yet 1-2 squat variations in a workout. That should be a HUGE red flag and should help you gain further understanding as to why your legs may be lagging.

The same should go for your hamstrings, which most will choose 1-2 movements for and no variations in foot positioning. There are three major muscles that make up your hamstring, and believe it or not the hamstrings are larger than your biceps (the biceps that lie on your upper arms for you anatomy buffs). Yet most will give little effort towards their hamstrings assuming there is plenty of overlap coming from the other leg movements. While your hamstrings do get a decent amount of work in a squat or leg press. It should also be noted that your biceps get plenty of work when doing a pullup or barbell row. Again, the issue of balance needs to be applied when designing your next routine.

It’s time to understand muscle balance and how to layout a routine with a bit more focus on the larger muscle groups and a lot less on the smaller ones. It might just blow your mind that increasing your leg strength can actually boost the strength in the rest of your body.

Any questions regarding this article, please email Brandon@dssupplements.com or visit our forum and post up your questions http://www.dssupplements.com/forum/forum.php
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