How to work out my legs?

[halluites]

Hi again! i want a muscular lower body, including butt, thigh and calves of course. something like this:

since i dont have access to weights, do you think its possible to achieve this with only bodyweight-exercises? i master one-legged squats but havent really grown much in the leg area. dont know what to do.. any tip?

[Richard Duelley]

For the legs you would probably want to add weight to your SLS. Also your diet would play a huge role on getting bigger and staying really lean like the guy in the photo. My guess would be that he has engaged in some heavy power lifting type movements. If you have zero weights available (even a stack of books you can hold on to would work, or gallons of water, siblings, parents, significant other, anything really) try adding in the jumping part to the SLS, first for height and then add in distance as well. Explosive deck squats might help but I don’t know about getting the kind of growth shown in the picture without weights or a lifetime of training.

[Neal Winkler]

You'll never weight the pistol enough to get legs like that.

Buy a power rack and some weights and or join a gym. Otherwise, become content that you will never achieve huge legs.

[halluites]

hm ok. weird how theres alot of hard exercises for the upper body but few for legs

[Nick Van Bockxmeer]

Natural leg curls are not exactly easy...

[halluites]

Natural leg curls are not exactly easy...

agree. 1 exercise thats hard

[Neal Winkler]

Single leg back extensions, natural leg curls, GHR are all pretty hard lower body BW exercises but they're all posterior chain. You have to build big quads as well.

[Blairbob]

Excessive lower body hypertrophy for gymnasts is useless for the most part unless they need some hypertrophy because their legs are too weak in the first place.

[David Picó García]

I don't know what do you mean by master. If you want hypertrophy, you want a lot of reps and a lot of volumen. Can you do 10 sets of 15 SLS. If you can't, go for it, and tell me if you legs grow or not. Your legs won't grow that much with a 5x5 set/rep schema. If you can, then you are at the point where you may need to add weight if your objective is more sized leg. There is a post where some posted a great interview to Tom Platz. If you want really muscular legs, read it. But the short answer is this:

And of course you have to go to muscular failure and beyond. But this is another type of training, not the athletical one we talk at this forum

[Gregor]

Famous Tom Platz's deep squats

[Razz]

Wasn't bothered to read all the responses, but did anyone mention that the legs in that first picture most likely are NOT natural?

[Rikke Olsen]

Try Beggar Knees (not sure about the name or spelling, but it's something like that).

They kill my quads!

Also, I recall Ido's "Shrimp" to be a quad exercise.

[liam-h]

Skip to 8:23 for a tougher variation of the SLS!

[Joshua Naterman]

Wasn't bothered to read all the responses, but did anyone mention that the legs in that first picture most likely are NOT natural?

:thumbsup:

Good point. My legs used to be very muscular, but that was somewhat genetic and heavily developed by heavy back swuats and heavy front squats. Now that I'm doing lots of SLS, GHR, and NLC, my legs aren't as big, though they're still quite nice. My butt's getting bigger, which is pretty sweet! I am also as strong and possibly stronger than I was when my legs were bigger.

If you want big legs, you have to train for big legs. Part of why muscles get bigger with barbell work is because the center of gravity becomes much higher, so the leg muscles are doing a lot more stabilization work, and there's typically more lean as well, all of which load the muscle more and make it grow. You can't duplicate this without weights, honestly, but unless you have chicken legs I don't know that this matters much.

You don't need barbells, you know. Buy a cheap duffel bag and fill it with dirt. Do squats with it. When it's too light, replace some of the dirt with concrete. Eventually, if you want, you can buy a pipe from the hardware store and tie two bags, one to each end. Fill them with dirt. You always have access to appropriate equipment, but if you really want it sometimes you have to make it. Keep running through options, actively look for solutions! You can do it!

[liam-h]

sorry forgot to put in the link

go to 8:23

uLEMqN-Za_U

[Blairbob]

Liam, these might require more balance but they are not really more strenuous than a standard SLS. I'm sure there would be more motor unit activation but how much more? Bad scenario if you slip and crush your crotch.

[liam-h]

Thats true, was just putting it up as i hadn't seen it before, don't think I would be brave enough to take that risk exercising myself!

[Longshanks]

I think the photo you posted is of a guy heavily on steroids. You don't get to that kinda size naturally short of being a freak of nature. That's not a road you want to go down at all. I'm in the same boat, would love really big legs as most people i train with have (Thai boxers). You're much better just trying to get progressively stronger with weighted SLS's and accepting that you wont get that bog. Pictures like that are to skinny guys what airbrushed pictures of models are to women, just a lie. Most bodybuilding magazines even use airbrushing now and photo editors, especially in the before and after pictures you often see promoting whatever supplement is the fad this month. Don't get sucked in, its not real. Unless you want to take so much steroids that your body eventually stops producing testosterone, your balls shrink and you get bitch-tits.

[kintelary]

If you want "Big" legs, ride a bike. Whenever it gets tough to keep moving (hills, etc), stay seated, don't down shift and keep going. Works for me. And I have big legs. I am just protecting them with some excess fat at the moment so that they don't get scratched.

[Blairbob]

yep bikers get big legs sometimes due to hypertrophy

[Joshua Naterman]

I think the photo you posted is of a guy heavily on steroids. You don't get to that kinda size naturally short of being a freak of nature. That's not a road you want to go down at all. I'm in the same boat, would love really big legs as most people i train with have (Thai boxers). You're much better just trying to get progressively stronger with weighted SLS's and accepting that you wont get that bog. Pictures like that are to skinny guys what airbrushed pictures of models are to women, just a lie. Most bodybuilding magazines even use airbrushing now and photo editors, especially in the before and after pictures you often see promoting whatever supplement is the fad this month. Don't get sucked in, its not real. Unless you want to take so much steroids that your body eventually stops producing testosterone, your balls shrink and you get bitch-tits.

I dunno, my legs aren't that much smaller and I didn't juice to get them. I won't disagree that the model has probably had hormonal help of some type, just due to raw statistics on people of that size. If you talk to people like that in the gym you'll hear a HUGE list of supplements, and almost every time I hear about some new testosterone or growth hormone this or that. But then, my legs have been big ever since high school. I've always been very strong there, when I was 18 I was doing full ROM(in this case, meaning thighs to chest), on the leg press with 895 lbs for sets of 20.

[pauley]

I am a tracuer and Was wondering about legs excercises but jump shuttle runs are good so is interval training for Deck squats/ sls to build powerful legs But the best in the book ared definitely sls jump height and distance I would recomend these if you are wanting powerful legs dont know if they'll grow in size but will in power i dedicate one session a week meerly to legs and do a leg excercise every session

[Longshanks]

But then, my legs have been big ever since high school. I've always been very strong there, when I was 18 I was doing full ROM(in this case, meaning thighs to chest), on the leg press with 895 lbs for sets of 20.

Its sounds like you've already got good genetics for this type of training then if you were even big at school age. If so then you're obviously a very lucky guy. I think I read once that about 5-10% of the population are naturally mesomorphic. I personally believe it's very unfair and cruel to try and convince ectomorphic people that they can get massive naturally if they try this or that training/supplement. That's not to say they can't get bigger, but not to the extent in that picture.