The following details my primary leg workout from last Wednesday night at Kirkland Gold’s Gym. As I mentioned in my previous log entry, I’m switching my training split to allow for optimal recovery in light of what I hope are frequent trips to the mountains to ski on the weekends. A few of the exercise sequences were pulled from a John Meadows program, but the workout was largely laid out by me. Here is what I did…
Superset: Seated Leg Curls & Walking Lunges
Perform a few warm-up sets on the seated leg curls before jumping into the superset. The seated leg curl machine I used is unilateral so weight listed is per each leg – FYI.
Seated Leg Curls x 8 reps with 80lbs
Immediately followed by…
Walking Lunges x 10 strides each leg with bodyweight only
*I purposefully mixed things up on this workout as you will see. I normally end my workout with walking lunges, but opted to start with them as part of this superset. On the leg curls focus on using perfect form and hold the contraction for a split second on each rep. Select a weight in which you nearly hit failure by the 8th rep. Go immediately to walking lunges and as always take long strides, gently touch your trailing knee and pausing at the bottom. Perform the superset for 4 rounds.
Leg Extensions
Set 1 x 25 reps with 130lbs
Set 2 x 25 reps with 130lbs
Set 3 x 25 reps with 130lbs
Set 4 x 25 reps with 130lbs
*Nothing special here, aside from some high volume sets to burn the quads and make you curse, lol.
Dead-Stop Hack Squats
I used reverse bands to aid explosiveness out of the bottom. Here is the band I used: https://www.elitefts.com/pro-light-resistance-band.html.
Set 1 x 7 reps with 2 plates/side (feeder set)
Set 2 x 7 reps with 4 plates/side
Set 3 x 7 reps with 4 plates/side
Set 4 x 7 reps with 4 plates/side
Set 5 x 7 reps with 4 plates/side
Set 6 x 7 reps with 4 plates/side
*Control the weight down until the machine bottoms out, pause for a second and then drive the weight up as hard as you can. Your quads should be plenty pumped and warmed up so drive hard. You will likely lose some explosiveness near the end, but that’s ok. Do 5 working sets.
Here is a video:
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceW9PITCVEY]
Leg Press
Set 1 x 15 reps with 3 plates/side
Set 2 x 15 reps with 4 plates/side
Set 3 x 15 reps with 5 plates/side
Set 4 x 15 reps with 6 plates/side
Set 5 x 15 reps with 7 plates/side
Set 6 x 14 reps with 8 plates/side
*The idea here is to perform sets of 15 reps going up until you fail to get all 15 reps. Pump these out non-stop and be sure to get in at least 4 working sets.
Dumbbell Stiff-Legged Deads
I elevated my toes on 5lb plates to facilitate a better hamstring stretch – FYI.
Set 1 x 10 reps with 55lbs
Set 2 x 10 reps with 55lbs
Set 3 x 10 reps with 55lbs
Set 4 x 10 reps with 55lbs
*I cannot do a bunch of weight due to my lower back, but the primary goal here is to stretch out the hamstrings anyway. Adjust the weight as per your abilities. Do 4 working sets of 10 reps each.
That concluded this primary leg workout.
Train hard!
Mark