The following workout was completed this past Saturday morning at Kirkland Gold’s Gym.  The workout was designed by my coach, John Meadows, but I made some rather significant modifications for a several reasons.

 

One, I was training alone which made it difficult to really push the limits of failure on some exercises.  Two, I had removed my gym bag from my car the night before and forgot to put it back which meant I was missing my weight belt and bands.  Three, I trained relatively fast because were headed to one of my favorite towns in Eastern WA for the day so I needed to get in-and-out of the gym quick.  The main pic is from Eagle Falls on the drive over.

 

Regardless, this was the final week of high frequency (3X/week) leg training and John wanted me to push to the point of almost overtraining.  As such I went as balls-out as possible with the leg press as it was the best option for me without a weight belt.  Here is exactly what I did…

 

Seated Leg Curls

 

I used a Life Fitness unilateral leg curl here, so weight listed is per each leg – FYI.

 

Set 1 x 20 reps with 30lbs

Set 2 x 20 reps with 40lbs

Set 3 x 20 reps with 50lbs

Set 4 x 20 reps with 60lbs

Set 5 x 20 reps with 60lbs

Set 6 x 20 reps with 60lbs

 

*This week the key is to pump out the reps.  I worked my way up to a tough weight and stuck with it for 3 working sets.

 

Lying Leg Curl

 

Set 1 x 8 reps with 110lbs

Set 2 x 8 reps with 110lbs

Set 3 x 8 reps with 110lbs -> drop to 65lbs x 10 reps

 

*The goal here was it switch to heavy weight and rest/pause all the reps on each set.  My hamstrings were so shot that I could barely get 8 reps with 110lbs so I added a drop set out of frustration on my final set, lol!  Be sure to stretch your hamstrings really well after this exercise.

 

Leg Press

 

Here is where I really deviated from John’s program due to a lack of a weight belt and because I didn’t want to push the limits of hack squats without bands or a training partner – FYI.

 

Set 1 x 20 reps with 2 plates/side

Set 2 x 20 reps with 3 plates/side

Set 3 x 18 reps with 4 plates/side

Set 4 x 16 reps with 5 plates/side

Set 5 x 14 reps with 6 plates/side

Set 6 x 10 reps with 7 plates/side

Set 7 x 8 reps with 8 plates/side

Set 8 x 8 reps with 9 plates/side

Set 9 x 8 reps with 10 plates/side

Set 10 x 8 reps with 11 plates/side

Rest long enough to remove plates

Set 11 x 30 reps with 6 plates/side

Rest long enough to remove plates

Set 12 x 25 reps with 5 plates/side

Rest long enough to remove plates

Set 13 x 20 reps with 4 plates/side

Rest long enough to remove plates

Set 14 x 30 reps with 3 plates/side

 

*Yes, leg press death!  My approach here was to start out light and perform high reps as I went up in weight, but always stopping well short of failure.  Once my reps dropped down to 8 I just kept adding weight until I could barely get all 8 reps.  This occurred once I reached 11 plates/side, and then I immediately stripped the weight back down to 6 plates/side and ramped up the reps again.  Using pump reps I kept stripping plates and getting as many reps as possible without stopping until I was back down to 3 plates/side.

 

Hanging Leg Raises

 

4 sets of 15 reps

 

*Hanging is a great way to decompress your spine, so hanging leg raises kill two birds with one stone for me.

 

Standing Calve Raises

 

4 sets of 30 reps and 30 second isoholds

 

*Yes, these are performed by doing 10 reps, holding the top contraction for a count of 10, then another 10 reps, a 10 second isohold, another set of 10 reps, and a final 10 seconds held in the contracted position.  30 total reps and 30 total seconds of isoholds per set.  Your reps will be more like partials towards the final 3rd and 4th set, but that’s ok.

 

That concluded this leg, abdominal and calve workout.

 

Train hard!

Mark