When you step into the gym, I guarantee you'll see guys who are completely lacking in lower body development. This is due to the fact that guys are way too obsessed with upper body training. Usually what happens when you do this is that you lose all proportions with your body. Without further ado, this article will cover how to grow your legs and glutes.
Legs:
When you're training legs, the most important exercise will be the squat. The squat is the best exercise for leg development if done correctly. Most guys avoid squats like the plague, this is because you suck at them. Once I started squatting properly my leg development became much better. You need to do enough to tear down those muscle fibers. Forget about the pump and focus on tearing down muscle fibers.
Squats:
I recommend low bar back squats for most people to start out with. The low bar squat will add mass to your whole leg, and your glutes. To properly execute the low bar squat, you need to put the barbell on your rear delt muscles. Then you will have a slight forward lean. Afterwards, you will breathe out and down and squeeze your core as tight as possible, this is what will protect your spine. Then push your butt slightly back and down as you spread your knees out and let them travel forward, then you pop back up, and stand up explosively.
Squat recommendations
2 x 4-6 reps
1-2 sets of 20-25 reps
Front squats:
Once people have properly mastered the low bar squat, I show them how to front squat. The front squat places more emphasis on the core and on quad strength. This is good because it'll help you add muscle in the teardrop area, which is also called the vastus medialis. For front squats I'd keep the reps between 8-12 basic rep ranges work best here.
Hack squats:
For my own leg workouts I always do hack squats after low bar squats. I keep a close stance with the toes pointed slightly out, this allows the lifter to target the outer quad sweep. The quad sweep is also called the vastus lateralis. Doing these correctly will allow you to have proportional quad development. On hack squats, you need to go down slowly 2-3 seconds down, and 1-2 seconds up. This controlled tempo will take the momentum out of the movement and help you grow your legs faster. Momentum kills muscle gains. For hack squats I generally keep the reps between 8-20. Depending on the weight, make sure you're doing heavy sets on these as well.
Low foot leg press:
The low foot leg press is great for targeting the quads. Now, this exercise has a more limited range of motion then a hack squat or low bar squat. To execute this place your feet at the bottom of the sled, or leg press machine. Then use a close stance, again to target those outer quads. Go down slow and controlled and perform 20-30 reps on these. For leg press, higher reps work best. Do 2-3 sets of 20-30 reps.
Now that completely covers quad training.
The next part of the article will go over hamstring and glute training.
Hamstring training
The most effective mass builder for hamstring is the Romanian dead-lift.
This is different from the stiff leg dead-lift. A Romanian Dead-lift starts from the top, and ends around the mid shin, and sometimes slightly higher. Start from the top and push your butt back and lower the bar slowly to mid shin. Keep your back arched and use a controlled pace, keep your attention on feeling the stress in the hamstring. This is what will help you make the most gains.
For this exercise keep the reps between 8-15, and go slow. Control the movement for the entire set. 2-3 sets done correctly is more than enough for this exercise.
The next great hamstring and glute builder is the reverse hack squat.
To do this movement, go to the hack squat machine and put your forehead against the machine, then get a slightly wider than shoulder width stance. Squat down as low as possible under control and then explode up after a slight pause. Reps of 10-12 here with a heavy weight are most effective. This exercise changed the game for my own hamstring training. Not to mention the glute gains you'll get from this are great.
For glutes I recommend doing Romanian Dead-lifts with a slow eccentric.
Eccentric is the when you lower the weight.
Thank you for reading.
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