See all Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth transcripts on Applepodcasts

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only 1 place to go. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schafer, and Justin Andrews.

You just tuned in to the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast ever. This is Mind Pumped, right? In today's episode, we talk about developing your legs. It's the legs masterclass. To be more specific, we talk about working the quads and the hamstrings.

Best exercises, reps, sets, function, all that good stuff. Now this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Viori. They make athleisure wear that feels good, fits good, you can move in it, lasts a long time. It's great stuff, it's the best. In fact, it's 1 of the fastest growing athleisure wear companies in the world.

Go check them out, get yourself a discount. Go to vioreyclothing.com, that's V-O-R-E-Y clothing.com forward slash mindpump. And on that link, you'll get 20% off. We're also running a sale right now on some workout programs. We have a beginner workout program called Maps Starter.

That's 50% off. And then we have a starter bundle, which is Maps Anabolic and Maps Prime. So it's not so much a beginner program, but a great intermediate type strength training program and Prime is a great way to prime your body before heavy lifts. That bundle is also 50% off. If you're interested, just go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and then use the code July50 for the 50% off discount.

All right, here comes the show. All right, today we're going to talk about developing the muscles of the upper legs. Specifically the quads and the hamstrings. Very big muscles, very important muscles for lots of different reasons. Today we're gonna talk about their function.

We're gonna talk about best exercises. We're gonna talk about reps, sets, all that great stuff if you're looking to develop amazing legs.

The Masterclass series continues.

Yes. Yes, sir.

You know, it's interesting because the lower body in general, but you're talking about the upper legs, so important for athletic performance, So important for athletic performance.

Do not skip leg day.

No, you need or just just performance in general you need Strong well-developed leg muscles and then this translates to aesthetics all the now I know that there's a lot of especially guys out there that will skip leg day, because you can hide your legs, right, with pants. But when you expose them, everybody will, by the way, guys, every girl will tell you this. If you get down to your skivvies and your legs look like you don't work them out and you have a well-developed upper body, not only is it, doesn't look right, it's a turn off. And why? Because we primally know that this person doesn't have good function.

This person can't move well. So don't skip leg day.

Yeah. Well, to your athletic point, I mean, it's really where you're going to generate all your power. I mean, your legs are responsible for driving all of that explosive movement and getting your body to do all these crazy athletic moves necessary to be a great athlete. So it's highly important. Now, do

you guys think, I feel like this has changed a lot, the amount of guys that don't train legs. When I was a teenager and lifting weights, there was like 1 friend that trained his legs. Where now when I think of like all my male friends, now I don't know if this is somewhat of a bias because I've gotten older and what I do for a career, I'm centered around mostly coaches and trainers and with that, so maybe there's definitely a bias with me, that's why I'm asking. But it feels like it's the opposite now where most everybody I know, he trains legs, but maybe I have 1 friend who's a leg skipper, but most do not.

I would say skipping legs still happens, but way less.

And I

think it's because of the popularity of the barbell movements,

the barbell squat

and deadlift. I feel

like CrossFit really, that's another thing I think CrossFit did a really good job is getting the bros

to squat. And there's lots of memes, you know, when the meme stuff started happening and the internet kind of became a thing.

Shame works sometimes.

It does, and guys are like, oh crap. You can't bring

back shame. I mean, can't deny it. Justin's been campaigning for bringing back

shame for like the

last 2 years.

Bring back shame.

Bring back shame.

We need it. You know, back to the athletic point, so just to hammer that home, people think, oh yeah, you gotta run, that's why you need powerful legs. No, no, no, pick an upper body movement. Throw a ball, try not to use your legs, throw a punch, try not to use your legs. You're gonna have a, you're gonna generate a fraction of the power or you're gonna be able to throw a ball a fraction of the distance without having good coordination and strength from the lower body.

It was

a terrible example, but I was just thinking about like treading water in a pool, right? And then you're trying to throw a ball or trying to throw a punch. Like you have no, no grounding, no anchoring there to really like, you know, establish the whole rest of your body, which produces a lot of force through these muscles in your legs.

By the way, I will also say this, more back pain comes from weak legs than a weak back. A lot of people think back pain comes from a weak back. Oftentimes it comes from a weak lower body and then the back has to do work that it can't support. I

think that that was a major contributor to my low back pain. Remember I talked about having low back pain for a really long time. I think I had a weak lower leg from not squatting or doing any of that stuff when I was a teenager. And it wasn't until first I started squatting and then I started deep squatting, did that completely go away?

And I

think it has a lot to do just with weakness in my legs. And so the lower back was overcompensating a lot in a lot of my movements. So I totally agree

with that. When you bend over to pick something up or you're doing stuff where your back is active, the lower body is what's supporting it. And if the lower body can't do it, then the back has to do most of the work. And this is why you see lots of back injuries. There's actually weakness and immobility or mobility issues in the lower body.

And then of course, core and low back plays a role. But if you have bad back problems and you don't strengthen the lower body, the chances of you really fixing the root cause are actually quite slim.

You know, the irony around the young teenage boy skipping legs too is that, I mean, at least if you can identify as the insecure skinny boy who wanted to build and be bigger I mean how how fixated were you on the scale and how fixated were you on just being bigger in general

funny is that?

And you

work you don't work.

Oh my god like I mean I have a why I don't think I could ever get under 200 pounds anymore. It's just because my legs, my legs are so much thicker and heavier now than they were when I was a teenager that I don't think I could get my weight down because of how thick and big they are compared to when I was younger. And yet that was the thing I was so insecure about as a teenage boy was being this skinny looking light kid, you know?

You know what's funny is I've talked about this on the show. There was that summer, I wanna say between sophomore and junior here, maybe in high school, might've been that year or that summer where I gained, I don't know, close to like 14 or 15 pounds.

Probably came from weight.

Which is, That's when I squatted and deadlifted. And I remember that all my pants stopped fitting me. I all of a sudden I couldn't wear any of my jeans because my legs and my butt had grown. And that's where a lot of the weight, I mean, I guarantee I had 14 pounds, 10 of it probably went to my lower body.

Well, I know I'm not alone too. And even you start like barbell squatting, like what that does for your upper body where I saw gains, like in my shoulders and my chest, I'm like, what? Like just from adding that in is another, uh, you know, big lift.

Not to go off on a tangent, but a lot of people don't know this that there is a strange limiting factor to how much muscle you can build that has to do with the rest of your body. So if the rest of your body is very underdeveloped, the part of your body that you do train will only go so far. And they actually shown this in studies. For example, they'll have studies where somebody will have a leg that's immobilized, like in a cast, let's say, and they'll train the leg that can move, or they do have people who don't train you the leg. The people who train the leg that they can move lose less muscle in the immobilized leg.

So there's like this interesting communication that goes on, but it makes sense because your body doesn't necessarily think in terms of muscle groups, but rather as a whole because when you move, you use all of them.

I think a lot of that has to do too, or at least I speculate a lot of that has to do with the CNS and what you miss out on by not squatting and deadlifting. And I love your, and this is why I've always loved your analogy with the amplifier and speakers when we speak of our central nervous system being the amplifier, our speakers being your muscles. And you put so much emphasis on building the muscles or getting big speakers, but little effort towards really developing, strengthening, and building a CNS. And I mean, what builds the CNS, the ability to fire and be strong like a deadlift and a squat. And I think that is where the, like there's everybody know, or not everybody knows, a lot of people have heard that if you are stuck on your bench and you can't get your bench up to build your legs up and it goes up.

I think that has, even though you can make the case for leg drive supporting some of that, I think it has less to do with leg drive and then it's the overall development and improvement of the CNS firing that carries over into that. That would be what I would spend.

Oh, if you don't, if you were like, let's say you just love to bench press, you never work out your legs and you're trying to get your bench press, grow up, start squatting.

Yeah.

And you probably will see an increase.

It'll unlock things.

It's really weird. Right. And then mobility. And now in the fitness space, When we talk about mobility, people think of like, you know, being able to get in weird positions and flexibility and twisting all that stuff, but in the most literal sense, mobility as a human in the modern world is you're able, you're able to go places, you're able to get up and walk and move. And when you get older, as you get older, 1 of the biggest contributors to loss of independence is your loss of lower body mobility, even more so than upper body mobility, your inability to get up and get back down or falls because you lose strength in your lower body are tremendous.

I mean, I have older people in my family and you watch what happens, them sitting down and just getting up off the couch, even having to get different types of toilet seats and handles so they can sit down and use the bathroom. And if they fall down on the ground, their legs aren't strong enough to get themselves back up. Like in its most literal sense, strong legs give you great mobility, or at least you'll be able to maintain it for the rest of your life. So the case is essentially, we're making the case that leg development is extremely important, Extremely important. And then from an aesthetic standpoint, weak looking legs means you probably look weak overall.

Athletes know this, but I think the average person knows this just inherently. You see somebody and you can see their whole body. And if you see a huge contrast between upper and lower body, doesn't look right. They don't look

like they're strong. There's discrepancy there.

Now for those that are training legs, what comes to mind is like some of the biggest mistakes that people make. Like what do you, like the people that are training legs, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you would recall?

Well, I would say not doing the best exercises. Okay. It's a really big,

I would say that's number 1.

Yeah. That's gotta be number 1. And then, you know, not treating a lower body or any exercise in general, but specifically lower body ones like squats as a skill, but rather I'm going to do these until I get tired. Yeah. Um, To make squats and deadlifts and lunges and all these great exercise for lower body effective, you have to perfect the skill of those exercises.

Otherwise, they're not...

I would agree. Exercise selection as number 1. Number 2 treating those exercises like a skill getting good at them.

Yes, so

that you could perform the wall and then 3 I would say Neglecting the hamstrings.

Yeah,

I There's so many more. Yeah pieces of equipment that address the quads and people don't see as many hamstring exercises. You don't see it, it's on your backside. And I think most people neglect posterior chain as it is. And the hamstring still is a really big muscle.

And when you want like shapely, thick, good looking legs, like developing the backside is as important as the front.

Well, and to that point, even I feel like hip-hinging movements don't get a lot of attention to your everyday average person in regards to like a squat. Like a squat's a little bit more known, but to really do a good hip-hinging movement and add load to that takes a bit more education.

It does. And then, you know, from an athletic standpoint, hamstring injuries are very common because you see an imbalance with quad strength.

Overdominant quads. Yeah. Hamstring can't keep up. I forget what the percentage is. Your hamstrings, is it 60 or

80%

they need to be able to do

in order? I want to say 60%. But I would say, I mean, God, how many times more often do hamstrings get injured than quads? Oh yeah. It's kind of rare.

It's what's slowing you down. It's the decelerators. And so it's definitely 1 of the more common ones for athletes.

It is, it's a very common 1. So it's important to develop them. Now to be fair, a barbell squat done properly develops the whole leg, but you want to do some exercises that kind of target the hamstrings, hip hinging real important. I talked about back pain earlier. Besides the glutes, the hamstrings are probably 1 of the most important muscles for back health because it helps you hinge at the hips.

And if those are weak, then it's all gonna be lumbar spine.

It keeps you upright. It is.

So let's start with the quads. We'll start there first. Now quadriceps, quad meaning 4, they named it that because there's 4 heads to the quadriceps. There's the vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, intermedius, basically outer, inner, you know, kind of middle quad. Those are the, those 3 heads.

Then you have the rectus femoris, which kind of goes down the middle and covers the whole thing. And really the function of the quads is to extend the knee. So if you bend your knee and then kick it out, that's what the quads do essentially. And then they stabilize the kneecap. The kneecap kind of floats over a joint on your femur And really strong, good, healthy quads keeps that kneecap from grinding in 1 area or another, or from popping out to left or to right.

In fact, when I dislocated my kneecap to the outside, yeah, same thing.

Yeah, I was just going to point that out. That is so much that you could injure your knee sometimes, and the quad will help stabilize that.

Yeah, so when I dislocated my kneecap when I was a kid, my left 1, and it popped out to the outside, the physio told me to strengthen the teardrop muscle of the quad. And it is very important for stabilizing. So it extends the knee.

I couldn't figure out why I didn't feel like anything was that wrong when I tore my ACL and MCL. Because, and the doctor, this was right at the height of like me building a lot of muscle. I was pretty muscular and playing basketball and then I tore it. And the initial injury hurt and then of course the next day when all the swelling hit in, but mechanically I felt okay. I didn't really feel like something, even though we did the X-ray.

Yeah, they're like really challenging.

Yeah, and I always remember asking like, man, really, I tore it? Like it feels like I'm okay. And he's like, no, no, you definitely tore it. The reason why you feel okay is you've done such a good job of developing all the surrounding muscles that support this floating joint. And so even though you're missing important ligaments right now, you've got like some good support on it.

That's how crucial it can be to build and develop muscle around those knees. So think about that as we age, just protecting the knees. Knees are some of the most common surgeries that you hear out there in the elderly. And so that's another thing that's so important about building those quadriceps and building those legs in general is because it supports that joint. And that joint is 1 of the most common joints that you hear people getting surgery on.

It is. And now, although I did say it extends the knee, people might think, oh, the best exercises are ones that just extend the knee. Not true, like most muscles, they develop best when they're trained with other muscles in what are called compound lifts. We'll get to that a little later in the episode. But I just wanted to say that, because once I mentioned the function, I think sometimes, oh, I'm just gonna do exercises.

Leg extensions only.

And it does work the quad, but it's not gonna develop the quads nearly to the degree or with the same functional strength as other exercises. Then we have the hamstrings. Hamstrings on the back of the leg. You have 3 muscles, the bicep femoris, the semi-membranosus, semi-tendinosis, and these muscles flex the knee, meaning they bend the knee back, so it's like you're trying to kick yourself with your heel, right? That's what that muscle does, and it flexes the hip, or sorry, extends the hip, I should say.

So it's like if you bend over and stand up, the hamstrings help stand you up. And they also involve some rotation of the hip. And that's what those muscles do. Now, most people when they think hamstring exercises, they think leg curls, which is true, but you're missing out on a lot of development by just focusing on leg curls. Hip, I would say, really extending at the hips is where you're going to get most of the development of the hamstring muscles.

Yes, which

we'll get into all those exercises.

We're going to get into those. So let's get to some of the best exercises. Now there's going to be carry over with some of these exercises, because some of these exercises work both the quadriceps and the hamstrings, the king of all exercises, which is, you know, it's widely known as the king of all exercise is a lower body exercise. It's known as the king of all exercises because of its effect on overall muscle mass performance, strength, you know, when you get good at it, protecting the back and the knees and the hips and just functional. And that's a barbell squat.

It's 1 of the best exercises you do period end of story, but it's a phenomenal quad and hamstring exercise. But I would say it's more quad dominant than hamstring dominant. Would you guys agree?

Yeah, no, it's just if you're trying to develop your quads, this 100% has to be in your arsenal

for sure

is to squat. And back to your original point, not only squatting, but continuing to treat it as a skill and get better at it because that's 1 of the beautiful things about the squat is the reason why I think the benefits continue and continue on for so long and it's so much more than almost any other exercise is because the difficulty of getting good at it and you're continuously seeing gains where let's say we do an exercise like you mentioned leg extensions, the body is going to adapt to that movement relatively quick because of the simplicity of it. You sit down in a machine, you're stable, you're supported, it's on a track, all you're doing is extending the knee out. Very, very little skill involved and even though it's stimulating the quadricep really well, it's not very long before the body starts to adapt. It would get

familiar with it quick.

Yeah, versus a squat, you could spend years squatting.

And you can load it different. There's all kinds of different ways to approach a squat And so you can emphasize it a bit more. So it's anterior front loaded. So now, yeah, your quads are going to be a little bit more, uh, enhanced in terms of like that specific exercise. So there's a lot of different ways to, you know, keep that fresh and keep your body responding from new stuff.

But it's more, it's also not just skill acquisition that lasts a long time. It's also skill maintenance. If you can do a full squat with load till the day you die in your nineties, you can do pretty much any, You can walk, you can sit, you can climb. You've got great mobility in your ankles and your hips and your knees, good stability. So it's just, it's just 1 of those.

It's, it's 1 of the few exercises that's good in almost every category. Athletic performance, like very few exercises have the carryover of a barbell squat for just athletic performance, jumping, running, sprinting, stopping, I mean, punching, I mean, kicking. It's just, it's got lots of carryover. So it's like this general amazing exercise that everybody should probably do.

There's also this part to it is we know that 1 of the best ways to stimulate growth in any muscle is novelty. First time the body is being attacked that way it's like oh my god the body has to adapt to overcome and the result is the building of muscle. And within the squat, there is so many novel ways to squat. Front squat, back low squat, high bar, low bar, sumo squats, narrow squats, tippy toe squats.

Front squat, back squat.

Yeah, you literally can do... It has like 8 different novel exercises within 1 exercise that is a huge difference than going over and going like, oh, look at that leg extension machine there, and then I'll try this other variation of that leg extension machine or leg press.

Leg press, and that's about it.

Right, like the- The 2 options. Those 2 are closer together than a front squat is to a sumo barbell back squat. Like those are so different, and yet, then they get so much, and because it's novel again, you're gonna continue to get, reap more benefits. So you could live within the squat and all the different variations of it and get tremendous results from the quads just doing that.

Yeah, and then there's split stance exercises like lunges. I love split stance. Yeah, now I remember, this is way back, right? So when I was training people in the late 90s, early 2000s, lunges, believe it or not, were relegated to like, cardio classes, aerobics.

Like jazzercise or something.

Yeah, and it wasn't until, I remember when this happened, it was Ronnie Coleman, he was Mr. Olympia, there was a video of him doing walking lunges with a barbell

on his back. In the yellow spandex.

Yeah, and he's doing them in the parking lot and obviously he was like, the guy's a monster. And all of a sudden lunges became like this, Oh, this

is a great. Never see bodybuilders doing that.

Yeah, now everybody does. Now they do. The truth is lunges and split stance exercises have always been super valuable. It's essentially a one-legged squat with 1 leg in the back giving you support. It's also putting the split stance, which mimics running and walking.

Yeah. Strengthens the pelvis because of the torsion.

Dare I say 1 of the more functional exercise you could do.

Absolutely, so lunges, phenomenal. And then up there is Bulgarian split stance squats, which are similar to lunges, but different.

And both of those are a go-to if I have a client who isn't ready to barbell back squat. So I know the goal is to get this client to barbell back squat because I know of all the benefits that we can reap from it. But if I'm limited for whatever reasons, whether it be injury, skill, or all the above, Bulgarian split squats or lunges is a great substitute on the way of improving or getting that person to squat.

100%.

And then isolation, we said leg extensions, very easy isolation exercise for the quads. If you wanna take it a step up, if you're more into like the, you know what, you want more functionality, you want more strength, you want more muscle, try a sissy squat. Range of motion. Yeah, like a sissy squat is much more challenging and is, I would call it an isolation mass builder, an isolation muscle builder. I would pair it against a leg extension all day long.

I don't even do, I haven't done a leg extension on a machine like seriously for years and years and years. Once I discovered 60 squats and started doing those, I was like, why would I ever do a leg extension? This is so much better.

So much value to that exercise. And it's funny because it's 1 of those exercises that like if you performed it back in the day Everybody would stop you and be like don't do this.

Yeah hurt

your knees. This is crazy What are you thinking? Even though it's like if you've done right and you're you know going to your limits and you know where you can comfortably control and Stabilize like it is such a great mass.

I really, I love the regression that Steve Cook did the other day. I hadn't seen somebody do that. I don't know why, I didn't think to do this either. I've always done a 60 squat where I'm holding onto like a squat rack as like support. And he actually did it within the squat rack, and he did band assistance.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

So he's holding onto the bands. And he

gives them more assistance on the way down. Yes.

That's where you need it. Makes a lot of sense. And you can adjust that by the thickness of the band. You want a lot of assistance when you get down? Then get a thicker band.

You want just a little bit of assistance, then get a thinner band. I thought that was brilliant. Now, you didn't list hack squats or leg press. Why?

Those are good exercises, but they are machines. There's less carry over to the real world. You're stuck to the confines of the machine where the sled goes, where the plate is, where the back pad is. If you're taller than average, shorter than average, your mobility is different than average. It's not super great.

The carryover to the real world is, I mean, you can add 200 pounds to your leg press, is not gonna give you the same carryover as a 30 pound increase on your barbell squat. So just to give you an example, the range of motion is shorter. I mean, bodybuilders like them because they like to isolate and squeeze and for hypertrophy purposes, but I mean, I you can never do those and do just the other exercise and you would develop

so I Agree with you, but I'm gonna add in these 3 exercises honorable mentions because I do see value don't explain We're having

to if you don't mention

that the hack squats the leg press and then what was the third 1?

Heels elevated goblet?

No, I wasn't even thinking of a goblet, because I would put that under squatting. Yeah, that's just fine. Oh, and then sled drive.

Oh, yeah, we'll sled it

for volume. Those are the 3,

okay, sled drive, leg press, and hack squat. And here's where all 3 of those actually kind of work similarly to how I would program these if I'm someone who's really focused on building their legs, is those are all 3 great volume builders. So the core of my programming, the core of my training is built around all the ones you said. Like that's my main focus always. Now I'm feeling good, I got an extra day in the gym, I've been running my program for a while, I feel like my legs can take a little more volume, I'm dipping into those 3.

Agreed, that's great.

So now I'm adding leg press, now I'm adding sled in there, now I'm adding hack squat in there too, or I'm using it to give me a break because I overreached on some of the big compound lifts. So let's say I've been crushing it and I hit barbell back squats and I'm on my second time of supposed to be hitting barbell back squats again this week or variation front squats or something and I'm still a little fried. My low back is a little fried or a little taxing on my hips maybe. So maybe I'm going to do drive the sled or leg press or hack squat because I want to pull back a little bit and because I overreach a little bit. So those 3 are in my arsenal and I'm going to use because I love those 3 movements also, but as a way of complementing the core ones that you put in there.

Yeah, I love those. All right, let's get to the hamstrings. So hamstrings, we talked about how they extend the hip and bend the knee. So let's talk about some of the best exercises. Well, it's gotta be, the best ones gotta be deadlifts and all the different variations of deadlifts.

Stiff-legged, Romanian, your sumo, your conventional deadlift. Even just a regular conventional deadlift is a phenomenal hamstring movement. I love it. In fact, I haven't, I almost, I'll do stiff-legged deadlifts and Romanian deadlifts, but they're not in my weekly routine. But conventional deadlifts are, and my hamstrings have always been strong and well-developed from conventional deadlifts.

So all those deadlift variations, very functional, strengthens the back as well as the hamstrings, develops wonderful, strong looking hamstrings, also involves the glutes. Those have to be at the top for

sure. Are you including good mornings in that conversation? Because I feel

like that- That's a good question. I think you could, right? Although it's not really a deadlift. I guess we'd have to say a good morning separately.

Yeah, I mean, I think a good morning has to be in there. I mean, I know you put leg curl physio balls in there, which I like those also, but I would say for building my hamstrings, getting big, developed hamstrings, the good morning, because you could load.

Oh, good morning, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, good mornings, in fact, some people can load a good morning more than they can a deadlift. If you have a weaker grip, for example, like you can't hold on to a lot of weight. A good morning sometimes people can't.

So what a good morning does that's really good that I like is if you have trouble really maintaining tall posture with a deadlift, you won't get away with it on a good morning. It teaches you, I mean it forces you into good thoracic posture and good posture. Otherwise it's gonna be all lower back. You do a good morning wrong, just a little bit, oh, I'm doing this wrong. So if you could do a good, good morning, you could do a good deadlift.

It's not true the other way around.

I agree. That's another reason why I really like a good morning is it can be more challenging, but it forces you into good form or else the...

Otherwise you feel it.

Yeah, or the bar comes rolling over the top of your head. So where a deadlift, you could totally have a rounded back and bad form and technique and get the bar up and not even realize that you're training a bad pattern bad form Because of your technique and you're still able to get the bar off Whereas a good morning in order to perform the good morning it requires

Good

for It's hard to have bad form and actually do the full exercise.

You're right. And I mean, talk about an exercise that fell out of favor because it looks scary and now it's popular again because everybody knows how awesome it is. But that was an exercise that old school strength athletes did all the time. In fact, they used to compete for strength over it. It was actually a strength exercise back in the day.

And you'd see guys doing that with 4 or 500 pounds. And then it fell out of favor because of all of a sudden, everybody said, don't bend over, it's bad for your back. Well, that's what you do with a good morning.

Well, it's interesting. Yeah, you'll see some of these kind of more extreme exercises that are making a comeback, like even the Nordic curls are making a comeback and Jefferson. And so it's 1 of those things where it's like, you know, I think as these start to kind of make their way back and people understand the actual technique, they get educated on them better, like they can start kind of pursuing, you know, outside of our conventional ones, but I think these conventional ones are the bangers.

Yeah, so just, you know, just general, right? When we're doing these exercises and we're working the hamstrings, we're trying to do hip flexion and extension, not lumbar or low back, right? So picture somebody standing straight up, if you could think of this person in

your head right now. Karate chop your hips.

Now imagine them bending forward at the hips, so their back is totally straight the whole time, so it's like they're sticking their butt out and then coming back up versus rounding their back and coming up. That's the difference between hip flexion and extension and lumbar flexion and extension. It's the hip flexion and extension we're looking for. If you've never trained or done strength training or done these exercises, it's gonna feel weird. It's gonna be hard to even get into the position to do this right.

So you really got to perfect the skill to make this exercise effective. And of course, they're very safe when you do them right. You do them wrong, they're not so safe.

Now, what does the research support as far as like total volume? Is it, is it equal to upper body or have we shown that you can actually handle more volume on the lower body than the upper body?

So it's interesting you say that. I think it would depend on the exercise and the lift. There's always a range, right? So total volume per body part, you'll always see anywhere between 9 to 18 sets per body part. Well, how can I do 18 sets for legs?

Well, you're probably not going to be doing a lot of barbell squats and deadlifts. But what about 9? How can I make 9 work? Well, now you're probably doing more barbell squats and deadlifts. So, you know, total volume, you have to equate the exercise and the intensity and then all the other factors that play a role.

But these big gross motor movement exercises like squats and deadlifts, you could do less of them and get better results than you would doing more of a lot of other exercises.

Okay, so I want to piggyback off that point to the 1 that I was making earlier about volume builders. So then what that looks like mathematically of structuring a program is when I'm choosing my hamstring and my quad exercises, I want at least 9 to 12 sets of those 18, at least 9 to 12 of those 18 sets coming from those big lifts. And then the rest of these other exercises-

And you probably won't need to do anything else. That's right. If you

need to. That's why I like, that's the idea. The idea is that if I'm getting 9 to 12 sets from these, the big ones that we talked about as like the primary ones that we would build our program around, that I'm okay. Like I'm gonna build a pretty damn good physique that way. Now I have room to push it up to 15, 18, 12, based off of how well I'm sleeping, how well I'm eating, how good my body is feeling from it, that I could scale the volume up and that's where I'm gonna use those other movements.

And it beats your advantage to pick some of those exercises that don't do quite as much damage. That's right. You can recover a little bit better, like your sled pushes, your sled drives, your sled pulls.

And now I wanna add to this, more isn't better. So if you can do more, that just means you can do more and recover. It doesn't necessarily mean you're going to do better. For a lot of people, less is better. So the way you judge how many sets you can do is not how many sets you can tolerate, but rather how many sets gives you the best results.

How much you could tolerate is more than what is ideal. Ideal is ideal. So you want to aim for ideal. So it's not like, don't push the volume to, oh, okay, the most I can handle is 18 sets. I'm gonna work within that.

No, no, no. Wait and see where your results come from and be like, ooh, I get best results at 9, then more won't do any better. Stick with the 1 that works the best.

So I have a small hack for, and I know 1 of the next points you're gonna make is the rep ranges, right? Anything between 1 and

25

reps, there's value of building muscle in there. But I have like a small hack for men and a small hack for women. If you're a woman, I challenge you to, you know, do the singles, doubles, and triples, and you know, under 5 reps. Add that into your arsenal. Because most of my female clients neglected the 5 or under rep ranges and they saw significant benefits to building their butt, their legs, their lower body when they train that way.

My men, 20 rep range.

Oh

yeah. There's gold and that's a little bit Stan Efferting who I know touts that a lot. There's so much and I think the guys tend to go the other way. Guys love maxing out and saying they squat or deadlift a bunch of weight. Rarely ever do they put a weight on the bar that they can rep out 20 to 25 reps and you want to see your legs grow, do 20 rep sets sometimes.

Now intensity wise for most people you're looking to train with a high intensity but you're not looking to train to failure. Although failure training has value, the programming with failure training and the type of individual it works for is, uh, it's, it's not the majority, it's minority. Um, we have a program called maps, anabolic advance that, that does that. But for most people, you want to train with a weight that allows you to perform your target rep range between, like we said, 1 to 25, that you could do, let's say you did 10 reps, you could have done 12, but you stopped at 10. So always think of that, like, okay, I think I could do maybe 2 more, 3 more.

I'm gonna stop the reps here. That's the intensity that you wanna be at. So it's a high intensity, but you're not pushing yourself until you can't do anymore. And that studies have shown to be kind of the sweet spot for most people.

Yeah, and again, stressing the skill. I think, I mean, off the top of my head, I can't think of a muscle group that has more skill exercises in than the lower body, right?

Oh, yeah.

Wouldn't you say that? Oh, yeah.

I'd agree with that.

Yeah. So really, when you get to lower body, a lot of these movements we talk about, so much of them are skill and practice.

And so.

You have to

perform very deliberately.

Yeah. And instead of, and I know I challenged the, you know, the low reps and, and, and lifting heavy, and we know that load is going to do help out with growing, but there's so much room to perfect this movement and get good at moving. Like, you know, treat that when you go into these, these workouts, when you're doing these exercises to get, get perfect.

And this is why when we gave you the set count for the week, you could do all those sets in 1 workout, but you're probably better off practicing more frequently and dividing those up. So rather than doing 9 sets of leg exercises on 1 day a week, you're probably, and most people will get better results doing, you know, 9 sets spread out over 3 workouts. So 3 sets on each workout, because you can practice more frequently, because fatigue isn't going to play as big of a role in your technique, you're fresher. Most people are going to get better results dividing those sets up by a bunch of workouts rather than doing them all in 1 or 2 workouts. That's true for most people.

Look, if you love the show, head over to Instagram, go to Mind Pump Media. We actually give well-planned workouts and exercises there for very low cost. It's under $5 a month. Mind Pump Media on Instagram. You can also find all of us on Instagram if you wanna follow us.

So Justin is at Mind Pump Justin. I'm at Mind Pump DeStefano and Adam is at Mind Pump Adam.

Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes MAPS Anabolic, MAPS Performance, and MAPS Aesthetic, 9 months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Super Bundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Super Bundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can get it now, plus other valuable free resources, at mindpumpmedia.com.

If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a 5-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump!