Fitness Tips, Your Questions
"Can you share what you do for legs? I hit plateaus pretty quickly and my legs seem to resist new growth. They get stronger, but not necessarily bigger or more defined."
This is a common question, especially among lifters who do not have a background in leg-heavy sports, like rugby, football, or even certain positions in soccer (goalie, central defender, target, etc.). Don't despair! The laws of science are equally true for everyone. However, that science does need to be nuanced and functionalized to exercise science applications.
In my last article about lats/back (see Archive below, 2024 button), I laid out the four main ideas of muscle development: (1) stress the muscle enough, (2) rest the muscle enough, (3) eat strategically, (4) time. That science will always be true for you and I and every human. Your legs will muscularize--or not muscularize--depending on how you technician those four realms.
(L) Tire flips at my gym in Florida. Tire flips, explained below, are one of the very best leg-builders. (M1) Lunge-walking slowly up stairs to work the calves. (M2) Waterfall climbing, creative calf workout. (R) Sideview, calf development.
(1) Stress the Leg Muscles Enough
When I say "stress the leg muscles enough", the nuance is that the stress needs to be hypertrophic-oriented. Distance jogging, anything over 45 minutes, is not hypertrophic-oriented. That makes the legs endurant and long (marathoner legs), but not meaty and herculean. Jogging no more than 45 minutes is a nice sweet spot because it helps carve the legs without working against muscularity. (It also works your heart and lungs, which must be a part of any self-care system.) Just do not do it more than once every three or four days. The other days should be anaerobic-hypertrophic exercises. Here is what I do. As you can see, it works fabulously.
Heavy Lifting. Sets of 6-15, moderately heavy to heavy, focusing on squats, walking lunges, and single leg stepups. Increase the weight in small increments every three or four workouts.
Tire Flips. I adore tire flips, goodness. I would do them everyday and in my sleep if I could. Make sure your back and biceps are fresh and fully recovered before tire flip day. Make sure you use a tire size you can do correctly in the 6-15 rep range. Do not hunch your back or neck, keep both as straight as possible. (I am horrified by people at the gym contorted their body in unnatural positions to grind out 2-3 reps on a tire way too heavy for them. This is asking for a major longterm injury.)
German Volume Training. Do a little online reading and see why this works so well hypertrophically.
Weight-Pulls. Pulling weight while walking backwards slowly. This exercise has tremendous effect on the calves and quads. Focus on digging the balls of your feet (the front half of your feet) into the ground and pushing off with them. This blasts the calves wonderfully. I do weight-pulls on grass so I can use my soccer cleats to really dig into the ground and push off with my calves. I use an old tire, with small weights or sand bags inside, and a normal rope I bought at Walmart.
Resistance Sprinting Varieties. Sprinting with resistance also makes the legs muscularize. One go-to from my competitive soccer days is weight-sprints, i.e., doing short sprints while dragging weight. I use the exact same equipment as the weight-pulls, however, I have a weight belt to connect the rope to my waist.
Sand-sprints and hill-sprints are also my go-to. I was exhilarated when I found, here in Florida near the beach, a twenty-yard sand hill at the perfect angle (around 45 degrees). A sand hill provides a double effect of both sand and hill. The results from this two-in-one are just spectacular.
Stair-sprints have also been a part of my system, although this depends on finding a usable staircase nearby. When I travel I use the staircase in the hotel, paired with squats or weighted stepups in the hotel gym. With stair-sprints the key is to go hard for many short bursts of no more than thirty or forty steps. This triggers the anaerobic, anabolic, hypertrophic reactions in the body.
Circuits, Supersets. When possible, I mix and match some of the above into a creative circuit or superset. This keeps the body from plateauing and forces it to keep adapting physiologically into new growth.
Constant Modifications to Avoid Plateau. Without constant micro-modifications you will plateau. Keep increasing the weight by a small amount every three or four workouts. Keep varying the rest periods between sets. Use rest-pause. Use drop-sets. Use up-sets. Constantly innovate these micro-modifications and your body will perpetually stay in adaptation mode, i.e., fitness improvement and hypertrophy. I explain the meaning these terms in my last article about lats/back (see Archive, 2024 button).
(2) Rest the Leg Muscles Enough
After traumatizing your legs muscles with a great workout, they need around three full days to recover. If you did not take the muscles to threshold, and your fitness level is high, they can recover with two full days off. If you took the muscles to threshold, they will need a full three days to recover, possibly four, depending on your fitness level and other fitness activities. It is during the recovery period that the muscles are actually growing. They are not growing during the workout, they are breaking down at microscopic levels and merely initiating the hypertrophic cycle.
Learn to have an intuitive relationship with your muscles. Sometimes they will signal they are ready to go again earlier than expected, sometimes they will signal they need more time. Do not exercise emotionally. Do not exercise as an escape. Do not exercise with ego. These almost always lead to burnout and injury, and other physical and mental problems. Exercise based on physiological principles as you listen to your muscles and body.
(3) Eat Strategically
A couple of articles ago I went into great detail regarding eating, especially eating strategically for advanced exercisists or fitness pros. The article can be found at the Archive below, the 2023 button.
The bottom line with eating is, you will have to eat enough so your muscles have enough resources to create new growth. This means regularly feeding your body lean protein, healthy complex carbs, and healthy fats. Your legs simply will not hypertrophy without enough nutritional resources to create new growth. In fact, if your body perceives a nutritional deficit it will start catabolizing its own resources to function. Translation: you will not grow, you will actually lose muscle. You must eat strategically to maintain an anabolic environment in your body.
(4) Time
Depending on your starting baseline, it will take time to build the legs you envision. If you are disciplined and diligent with your program, and you keep micro-modifying to avoid plateaus, and you eat strategically faithfully, you will see inspiring results within six months and more and more every few months after that.
As I often say, do not take the loser's route of steroids. Not only will it damage your body, God's gift to you, but it is glaringly unsustainable. Will you really be doing steroids for decades to sustain the results? Have you noticed the steady stream of bodybuilders and fitness pros dying in recent years? While the families are not always publicly forthcoming about the true cause of death, behind the scenes it is an open secret how and why they died.
The high purpose of advanced fitness is to celebrate and appreciate God's gift to you, to maximize sustainable physical and mental health, to maximize functionality and life activities, to maximize a sense of dignity and healthy love for yourself, to give the gift of your very best body to another, to inspire others toward higher purposes in their fitness journey.
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