Your hamstrings have to focus on both things during glute-hamstring raises.
Your hamstrings have two key roles: They bend your knees, and they also help extend your hips (essentially aligning hips and torso). One of the king hamstring developers, take advantage of this piece of equipment if it happens to be in your gym. Bonus: You can do it anywhere, even in your living room if you’re just using bodyweight. If you’re struggling to learn hip thrusts, step down to this and enjoy it.
Stronger legs plus#
Plus you don’t have to fidget around with a bench to find the best position. You’re hitting the glutes from a slightly different angle compared to hip thrusts, and involves a shorter range of motion that’s even more isolated to the glutes. Think of the glute bridge as a variation on the hip thrust that requires only a load (think barbell or resistance band) and floor space. Even better, you can do hip thrusts more frequently than some other leg exercises, since your upper body doesn’t have to bear as much strain. Since the force angle is horizontal and not vertical relative to the body, this is a tool for both healthy lifters, and those on the mend from a back flare-up. This is a great way to bear plenty of load to challenge the glutes and hamstrings, without having to fear excessive low back or spinal stress. But don’t run away from the machine, either. Should the leg press be the backbone of your workout? Should you load it up with titanic amounts of weight and ego-lift? No.
More importantly, it’s a joint-saving lift for lifters with their share of battle scars (think back, hip, and knee issues. First, it’s a great way to hit the quads with plenty more isolation than most squat variations can deliver. Sure, you want to ostracize this movement as being “not functional enough”, consider the tremendous benefits. Overall, you’ll smoke your quads and glutes while also sparing yourself unwanted back pain. It’s a great way to build mobility toward a deeper squat. Elevating your rear foot onto a box or bench instantly creates a challenging stretch for your quads and hip flexors on your back leg, and it places more of a balance challenge on both your front leg and your hips. Happy training!įew exercises build leg strength while simultaneously challenge your balance and your leg mobility as much as Bulgarian split squats. Our advice for building leg muscle is to build a plan, stick to it for a set period, and track variables that align with your goals, then add in leg exercise variations based on the feedback you get from following your program. For balanced leg training, you should be mixing up implements, switching up your planes of motion, and yes, even sprinkling in some isolation exercises from time to time. Far too often, we limit our leg days to the sagittal plane, and in doing, we're selling our leg growth short. On top of the regressions and progressions provided in this article, we've also included some exercises to help you break out of the sagittal plane of motion. We did this so you can break out of your norm and select leg exercises that align with your training goals. In this article, we cover a variety of leg exercises that range from single-joint to multi-joint movements, and we've also added multiple regressions and progressions for the quads, hamstrings, and glutes. Simply going through the motions and doing the same exact movement pattern day-in and day-out are selling your legs short for what they're capable of doing. This is why it's important to have variety in your leg training and to build the legs from a holistic point of view.
For example, it's useful to understand that the quads, hamstrings, and glutes are all composed of multiple muscles that execute multiple functions for the lower body. When asking the question, "how to build leg muscle," it's often best to start by recognizing and understanding your leg muscle anatomy. 'Don't skip leg day' is a saying for a reason-lower body workouts might not provide the immediate returns of an upper body pump session, but leg day training can be just as rewarding, if not more, in the long run. To build quality leg muscle, you'll need a smart strategy in place, and the will to work hard to execute it. There are few things in the world of fitness that top a pair of strong legs consisting of well-built quads, hamstrings, and glutes.