These 7 mistakes are preventing your legs from growing, and the 1st of them is training your legs anyway. I'm basically talking about the intensity at which you do this training. How do you do your chest training?
What level of intensity do you put into this training? And on the leg? Leg training , yes, it is much more intense, much more exhausting, and this in a systemic way, and not just in a localized way.
There is systemic fatigue, where you tire your entire body, and this happens a lot during leg training, and localized fatigue, which is directed at the muscles. We will notice this other type of very strong fatigue in other muscle groups, but let's return to the idea of intensity. How intensely have you been training so that this muscle group we have in our legs develops?
My tip: take leg training very seriously. It's an extremely exhausting workout, much more intense than the others, and if you don't deliver exactly that intensity in this workout, your legs won't develop. The 2nd mistake that also happens a lot, possibly you are making this, is about the training division.
When we think about leg training, we have some muscles to take into consideration. Gluteus, quadriceps, which is the front part of the leg, back of the thigh and calf. We have 4 muscle groups to pay attention to.
If you do one workout just for all these muscles, you're running a big risk of giving little attention and intensity to those who will come at the end. You arrive at the gym and do squats, leg presses, hack squats, leg extension, a very common workout to see. Here, you only did quadriceps and glutes.
Then you finish that, do a hamstring, often doing just one exercise, and then do calf raises. The question I ask you is: how do you reach your energy level, willingness to do calf raises or hamstrings? If you do a good quadriceps workout, you no longer have the energy to do an OK workout, not even a good hamstring and calf workout.
Quadriceps training alone requires a lot of energy and leaves you completely worn out, meaning that subsequent training sessions do not receive enough attention and development. Depending on what level you are, if you are more advanced, it is interesting to divide this training. When I do a good quadriceps workout, I can't do anything else, I don't train the rest of the leg.
What I propose, for those who are more advanced: you train quadriceps in one day, focus only on quadriceps. You can even understand that the glutes come together, because within a good quadriceps training come exercises that work the glutes well, which is the case of squats, leg presses, Bulgarian split squat, a great exercise for both, several exercises that fit into a training to work these muscle groups. On another day, you will do hamstrings and you can also do calf raises along with it.
We are taking a leg workout and breaking it down into 2 workouts, and this way you can train all the muscle groups in your leg well. There is even another error within this: developing the back of the thigh too little. 1: you get there already tired, you've already done squats, you've already done muscle exercises, and 2: you do few exercises for your hamstrings.
But don't worry, we'll cover this subject in another topic. The 3rd mistake makes your leg look ugly and even hurts your knee. I'm going to talk about making the right choice of exercises.
Get it in your head that there is an exercise that is rated 10, exercises that are rated 5, 4. How are you going to discover this? I've been doing this for over 20 years, after many years, I've managed to reach a point where I look at each exercise and identify its peculiarities and how good or not each one is, and due to the great complexity of the subject, you can find it on YouTube and there There's also a lot of content on my Instagram where we talk about this and even provide ready-made training so you don't need to study for more than 20 years, just like I did.
Or, if you want something more in-depth, you can become a student of mine too. Inside the Muscle60D, receive entire periodizations, which I put together with my hands, and even have technical support from personal trainers, nutritionists and physiotherapists on your WhatsApp. There's the link below so you can see the work we do.
If you are going to train your legs, understand that some exercises are for the quadriceps, such as squats and legs, and these exercises involve the knee, hip, everything together. They do not effectively work the hamstrings. Pay attention to what I'm going to tell you, because it's very important, firstly, to have prettier legs; and 2nd you avoid having problems with your knee.
Yes, you can hurt your knee by choosing the wrong exercises. If you did squats, leg presses, hack squats, you only worked your quadriceps and glutes. The hamstring has activation and for a long time, we looked at science and looked at electromyography studies, which is basically placing electrodes on the muscle and identifying how much electrical stimulus is reaching it.
During this phase, we argued that these exercises I mentioned worked the hamstrings. Science has advanced, and today we use many more studies that take into account muscle hypertrophy, how much the muscle developed, grew, by performing this exercise over a period of time. We discovered that the hamstrings does not develop.
It activates, contracts, but doesn't take enough work to develop, and you'll only find this in specific exercises for the hamstrings. Let's talk about leg curl machine, lying leg curl machine, standing single-leg hamstring curl, and stiff. Basically these 4 exercise.
Have you been including them in your training? Have you been balancing the volume of these exercise in your training? What is most common is a large volume of exercises for the quadriceps, and a small volume for the hamstrings.
Often 3 or 4 exercises for the quadriceps, and only 1 for the hamstrings. Do you notice the discrepancy? This will make your leg look uglier and will also make your knee more sensitive.
The 4th mistake absurdly reduces the intensity of your training, most likely you do it, and to date I have seen very few people talking about it, on social media, and in weight rooms out there. I'm talking about not paying attention to cardio. If this made you feel strange, great, because it will greatly improve your training when you correct this error.
If you have a cardiorespiratory system, better cardiorespiratory conditioning , your leg training will be better, and I've already felt this firsthand. You are going to do your squats, you have a good load. During the repetitions, as the series progresses, there comes a time when you become so out of breath that you cannot continue the series.
You didn't stop because your leg muscles couldn't continue, but because you lacked cardiorespiratory conditioning. This will also happen in exercises such as leg press, lunge, hack squat, exercises in which you mobilize large amounts of muscles such as quadriceps and glutes, and thinking about freer exercises, even spinal erectors, abdomen, with many muscles working, and your system can't handle it. The proposal of the series would be to take the target muscles, and we are talking about quadriceps and glutes, to something with a very high level of fatigue.
But what happened is that your body had so many groups working, that you tired your cardiorespiratory system. You were so breathless that you couldn't reach the intensity level of the specific muscles. Think with me: when you do this type of exercise, 1, you put a lot of muscles to work.
2, the demand in terms of placing a load on the exercise is very high for your body as a whole, both for the muscles that are exerting force to pull this load and for the other various muscles that are stabilizing your body to work. If you stop to think a little about how your body works in a free squat, you will see that there is a lot of muscle working, from your calf to your abdomen, erector spinae, there are a lot of people. And your body works more or less like this: when the muscle starts to work, to contract, your body understands that this muscle needs blood to carry oxygen to it.
If it needs blood, I will accelerate my heart rate because the heart sends blood to it, but it also needs oxygen. I will speed up my breathing rate to get more oxygen and send it to the heart. How many muscles are working?
What is the demand for blood and oxygen? Have you noticed that having this whole machine that will send oxygenated blood to these muscles is very important. You need to do training to improve your cardiorespiratory conditioning for this, and let's talk about using a treadmill, bike, stairs, they will help you exactly with your leg training.
The 5th mistake, after I explain it to you, you will realize that it is actually stupid, more than 90% of people in a weight room make it. I'm talking about the shoes you use to train your legs. Think about it with me: an industry does an entire study, brings together several engineers and develops footwear for a specific sport, for running, and takes into consideration things like the weight of the shoe, how much the fabric on top of the shoe makes it easier for the shoe to breathe.
foot, and also take the sole into consideration. You take these sneakers designed for running, take them to a weight room to train your legs, it doesn’t make any sense. The example I give is taking an F1 car, which was developed with all the technology to perform well on asphalt, and putting it on a rally track, where there is a lot of mud and holes.
It won't perform well. I'll say more, a running shoe, as it is designed to cushion impact, its sole is more malleable, making you lose stability. If you are doing chest training, on your back, you won't need your foot and it even works, for leg training, where you will specifically use your feet as support, this is a big mistake.
Just as there are specific sneakers for running training, there are specific sneakers for bodybuilding as well. There are training shoes that are specific for Olympic lifting. Its sole is extremely rigid, it looks like wood, and there are, of course, specific shoes designed for training such as bodybuilding.
I'm also going to tell you about a sneaker, developed by Fiber, that will bring you exactly the characteristics of being barefoot, it has a sole that gives you greater grip on the ground, greater stability, something that when people simply take off their sneakers and do the squats or deadlifts in socks, ends up being harmed because the foot can slip. I'll put the link here below Fiber, you'll go to their website and learn more about the characteristics of this sneaker and other products they have as well. Detail, you have a discount coupon there too.
The 6th mistake is a real shameless excuse, and if you do this, stop it now. It's putting the blame on genetics. "I don't develop because my genetics aren't good.
" Or you see a person with well-developed legs, and say. . .
I'll tell you that yes, genetics plays a role, but regardless of whether you have good genetics or not, can you change them? No. But you can improve your leg, your calf as much as your genetics provide, forget about genetics.
Here comes a very stoic teaching, they say about you not paying attention to what is not under your control, and your genetics are not, and doing a good training, correcting all the points we are bringing up, this is under your control, and I will guarantee you that if you blame it on genetics, you are exactly the person, you could develop your leg a lot, it could have results far beyond what you have had, and the simple point of stopping blaming it and training in a better way decent. If you want to develop your calves more, what have you done to do so? Let's start with how many calf exercises you do?
Sometimes people leave it until the end of training, they do an exercise or 2 at most, when you do this, when you're not in a hurry to leave, when you get to the end of training, you do the exercises just to comply with the schedule, very low density, and often, you don't even do them. Will the muscles develop? Is it really genetics that is stopping you from making it grow?
I think it's worth rethinking this. The 7th error is very simple to solve and will bring you a great result. Rest time.
When you do a biceps exercise, how tired you get. When you do free squats, how tired do you get? It leaves you more, right?
Does it make sense to give both people the same rest time? When we look at rest time and see people saying "Give me a minute of rest", which exercise is it a minute for? If you do barbell curls, one minute may be enough.
Now, if you do a good series of leg presses, lunges, it is possible that you will need, on average, 3 minutes to be able to recover to the point of doing a good series later. Stop looking at the clock, and start looking inside. Start observing yourself, and you will realize that if you give a minute or two minutes to some leg exercises it will not be enough, because you will be very breathless and tired.
Remember we talked about all that demand for oxygen, for blood? So this applies here. Rest time in leg exercises tends to be longer, or at least needs to be longer.
With the exception of some exercises that are more relaxed, such as calf exercises, hamstring exercises require a little less from you, but multi-joint exercises, such as squats, leg presses, lunges, lunges, in short, these will need you to give take more rest if you want to continue performing and developing that leg. I'll leave you with this video here, which is a complete and entire workout, and I selected the exercises and even explain the reason for each one of them. Leg Training Assembled With Science.
Click here.
