Leg Day
Anyone that’s ever stepped into a gym has heard the term ‘leg day’ or heard jokes about ‘skipping leg day’. Some of the most experienced lifters still live by the training mantra that you train legs once a week – hence the dreaded term ‘leg day’ was born.
But, what does a leg day consist of? And is this really the optimal way to build quads and hams to be proud of? If you’ve got a big old chest and bulging biceps then you really should have a big set of tree-trunk legs to hold those babies up – read on to find out how to grow them.
Leg Day Workout
Training patterns or ‘splits’ can be programmed in many ways:
Bro split: 1-2 major muscle groups per week
Push & Pull: A mixture of days where you push weight and days where you pull weight
Upper & lower: Upper body some days, lower other days
Full body: Sessions that exercise the entire body
Leg day has its origins firmly in the bro split, probably the most traditional of all the splits above and historically the split of choice for the bodybuilder community. One session per week would be dedicated to annihilating your leg muscles (never a Monday, obviously, as that’s National Chest Day), followed by 2 days of being unable to walk downstairs, sound like fun? Well, it isn’t, and all that pain, unfortunately, doesn’t equal gain…
How To Train legs
A randomised control trial by the University of Sydney studied groups performing 10 sets per muscle group versus 5 sets per muscle group in a single session and found that 10 sets are no more effective as 5.
Put simply, doing twice the work in a session doesn’t necessarily translate to twice the gains. They found that 4-6 sets per muscle group were the optimal level. This and many other recent studies cast further doubt on the traditional ‘bro split’ where one muscle group is worked in each session and a large amount of volume is included within that session.
In weight training, volume is the amount of work done in a session, for example, sets x reps x weight — this is often simplified to total sets per session, as calculating total sets is a great indicator of work done. Training volume is viewed by many as one of the most important drivers for muscle hypertrophy so it’s therefore vital to have sufficient volume exerted on muscle, or muscle groups, in order to elicit muscle hypertrophy and grow those tree-trunk legs.
As we’ve seen in the study mentioned above, there is only so much volume you can add into a single session before you start to see no gain for your pain.
In 2017 Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger’s systematic review and meta-analysis explored the relationship between weekly resistance training volume and the resultant increase in muscle mass. This meta-analysis of 15 related studies found that as subjects approached 10 or more sets per muscle group, per week, muscle growth increased linearly. This suggests that on average, a max of 10 sets per muscle group per week should be the target for maximum progress.
So, what does all this research tell us about building leg muscle?
Volume is key to muscle growth
10 sets per week per muscle group is the research-based target before you see diminishing returns
4-6 sets per session is the optimal amount of volume in a single session
This indicates that having a single ‘leg-day’ is not an optimal muscle-building strategy – 4-6 sets twice a week, per leg muscle would be a good target range
Leg Exercises
My not to be missed leg exercises:
Incorporating these into your resistance training plan will give a good spread of exercises in your training toolbox.
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