Strong Legs

There’s no need for you to go back to school and get a graduate degree in anatomy and physiology, but having a basic knowledge of your lower body anatomy will help you better understand how to train the lower body holistically and optimally.

In general terms, a lower body workout must focus on more than just a few exercises for the quads and hamstrings. The lower body includes three major joints: the ankle, the knee, and the hip. These three areas work through the cooperation of a series of muscle groups, discussed in more detail below.

These muscles, which form the back of your legs, work to flex your knees and extend your hips. Strong hamstrings help you jump explosively, as well as higher and farther. They also help in sprint deceleration, change of direction movements, and prevent overstriding. Strong hamstrings create more knee stability and help with keeping proper lower back posture. A set of strong hamstrings could be the key to your new Deadlift PR!

The Deadlift and Leg Curl exercises and their variations work to strengthen both hamstring muscles simultaneously. It is very important to include exercises that strengthen the hamstring both from hips (like Deadlifts) as well as from the knee (Leg Curl). In short, having a set of strong hamstrings could be the key to a new Deadlift personal record!

Your glutes are your largest and most multi-purpose muscle. The gluteus maximus comprises three different muscles that contribute to three major movements: namely, extension, rotation, and abduction. What this means is that your glutes are involved in all the major lower body exercises: Squat, Deadlift, Lunge, Glute Bridge, Jump, and Sprint. (The gluteus minimus and gluteus medius assist in all these movements and work to stabilize the hips.)

Having strong glutes ensures knee stability, alleviates undue knee stress during running and jumping, and helps prevent lower back pain and hamstring injuries. Finally, strong glutes will help prevent what is known as “gluteal amnesia”, a term which has gained popularity in recent years to describe the condition of people who sit at work for the majority of their day. Some even say sitting is the new smoking! Sitting all day weakens your glutes, creates tight hips, leads to back pain, and poor movement quality.

Also known as “the quads”, your quadriceps are four muscles located at the front of your leg who are the main movers when you extend your knees. They also help during hip flexion. Quads can be trained for performance as well as aesthetics; your quads help deepen your Squats, help you to jump higher and run faster, and make quicker cuts on the athletic field. But they can also be beautiful; a central element to body shaping. This includes the teardrop muscle, or VMO. This teardrop muscle is a coveted quad muscle that is key to having powerful, beautiful looking legs!

The quads are involved in all the major lower exercises: Squat, Hex Bar and Sumo Deadlift, Hip Thrust, Jump, Sprint, and Leg Extension (both Machine and Backward Sled Walk).

Also known as the inner thigh muscles, your adductors are best activated during single leg training, isolation exercises, and wide stance Squat and Sumo Deadlifts. They may be the muscles most neglected in traditional Squat and Deadlift programs, but can be crucial in preventing the dreaded “groin strain”, as well as help to build faster crossover movements on the field, enhance knee stability, and create a general balance to one’s training.

The calves consist of two primary muscles: the gastrocnemius (or “gastroc”) and the soleus. The “gastroc” is best trained when standing (with knees locked out) and the soleus is best trained when seated (with the knees bent).

The benefits of strong and powerful calves go beyond improved speed, athleticism, and jumping: strong calves can help prevent ankle sprains, as well as improve your self-confidence.

The key to a strong, happy, and healthy body is programming a wide variety of movements, which is where this book comes into play. Allow us to help you navigate training on multiple planes of movements—forward and backwards, side to side, jumping (vertical production of force and reduction of force) and sprinting (horizontal acceleration and deceleration) and rotation—with multiple variations of the Squat, Deadlift, and Lunge. Using the workout programs in this book, you’ll be fully equipped to start a comprehensive training program that targets all the key muscles in your body, in all the critical areas.

Merriam-Webster defines strength as follows: “The quality or state of being strong: capacity for exertion or endurance.”

All well and good, but it doesn’t say much about what it means for you, personally. Your definition of strength could mean four plates on the Hex Bar Deadlift, or 135 lbs. Walking Lunges, or any other exercise activity you enjoy that keeps you healthy, and is quantifiable.

The need to compare ourselves to others, to target some specific standard, is natural. We all do it, even if it’s just eyeballing the person next to us at the gym. But this often does a disservice to the work we put in and the progress we make. My advice? Define your own strength. Do not let a barbell define who you are and whether or not you are strong.

With that said, there will still be those who want to compare themselves and track their progress via the barbell. With that in mind, we provide some basic barbell strength standards for men and women here.

A quick word of caution on strength standards: strength standards are not an exact science, so look at them as general guidelines for learning where you can improve. Many strength standards over- or underestimate how much you can realistically lift due to age and anatomy. Strength tends to peak in your early to mid-thirties, while having shorter arms can lead to bigger bench presses, or longer legs to smaller Squats. Avoiding injuries, consistently eating a healthy diet, and training smartly are the best way to support consistent strength gains.

In an effort to offer a quick and easy-to-reference standard for this book, we’ll rely on relative strength figures. Relative strength is based on your body weight, whereas absolute strength measures how much weight you can lift regardless of your body weight or size. More often than not, a bigger person is a stronger person. So, to even the playing field, we compare relative strength numbers.

These standards are for everyday Men and Women, not elite athletes or professional powerlifters, and are based on my 20 years of coaching and lifting. They are categorized as Levels 1, 2 and 3, where Level 1 is performing at below expected levels; Level 2 is performing at expected levels; and Level 3 is performing above expected levels.

THE “OLD SCHOOL” 1-REP MAX VS. REP MAX

I’ve worked in the strength and conditioning industry for almost 20 years, coaching at the elite high school, Division-I college, and professional levels. And over the last few years, we’ve seen a trend of the best high school and college coaches stressing the “old school” 1-rep max methodology less and less. Personally, I have started de-emphasizing the 1-rep max with my programs, instead preferring the rep max and relative strength approach.

This approach has a number of advantages, including:

Safer progress. Max lifting is a skill, developed over the course of years. How and when to attempt a “max out” is something that should be treated with respect and carefully planned for. Avoiding this temptation leads to a lot less lifting fails and reduces the risk of injury.

Constant testing can derail strength building. Solely focusing on the 1 rep max can cause you to miss out on building other qualities of strength, like endurance, power, and hypertrophy.

A true 1-rep max effort really taxes your recovery. A very heavy, truly parallel Squat or Deadlift from the floor is very taxing on your body and can “cost” you a few days (or more than a few) to recover from, meaning you lose days towards developing more strength.

A new rep max can organically happen during your training program. Four weeks ago, you may have gotten 4 reps at 225 lbs. on the Front Squat. Today, you did 7 reps at 225 lbs. on the Front Squat. Did you get stronger? Of course you did. But it happened naturally, over the course of a holistic approach, without taxing your body or hindering recovery.

BUILDING A BETTER LOWER BODY