Quadriceps Training

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I personally hate training legs. I avoid it as much as possible and unfortunately, it shows. A lot of guys feel the same way as I do though. Check out the free weight section next time you’re at the gym and I bet a lot of the guys with jacked upper bodies are wearing long pants. Well, they’re most likely wearing those long pants for a reason - to hide their skinny legs.

Women on the other hand seem to love training legs. They really seem to make it their top priority - and for good reason. Men and women have different “problem regions”. Men tend to store fat around the stomach and women are more prone to fat storage around their hips and thighs.

Funny how the “problem areas” for each gender are also the areas that the opposite sex finds attractive. Women like men with broad shoulders, jacked arms and most importantly - at least for most women - is a guy with a toned, ripped mid-section.

And it’s no secret that us guys like women with sleek, sexy looking legs and let’s be honest here, we like girls to have a little booty as well. Not a sloppy one or anything - it’s has to be firm. Sorry for being so blunt about it but hopefully that will motivate you ladies to do a few extra sets of squats.

And if you’re not motivated by the aesthetics, then perhaps you’ll be motivated by functionality. We use our legs on a daily basis (obviously) as every time we walk, run, even sit up out of a chair - they’re called into action. The benefits of developing a strong lower body via exercise will certainly carry over to your day to day activities.

And for those of you who are into sports, leg strength is extremely important. A running back lowering his shoulder and driving through an attempted tackle, a basketball player blasting upwards towards the net to execute a slam dunk and an Olympic sprinter bursting out of the starting block and accelerating towards the finish line - they all rely on leg power for optimal execution.

So, are you convinced? Ready to start gearing up for those leg workouts? Well, before you get into the exercises, here’s a quick rundown of quadriceps anatomy.

The quadriceps - as the name indicates - consist of 4 muscles. Each of these muscles is located at the front of the thigh and each of these muscles also plays a role to extend (straighten) the leg. Here’s a breakdown of each of the muscles..

Rectus Femoris

Of all the quadriceps, the rectus femoris is the only one that crosses two joints - the hip and the knee. As with all other body parts, muscle balance is very important to prevent injuries. If the rectus femoris becomes too tight and overdeveloped in comparison to the abdominals, the pelvic will rotate forward - leading to more serious anatomical imbalances.

When you’re training, most exercises require a collaborative effort from all four muscles of the quads. After all, the rectus femoris alone only makes up for about 20% of the total force potential of the quadriceps. However, there is a way for you to isolate the rectus femoris when performing the seated leg extension exercise.

When performing the movement, all you need to do is lean back. When you lean back, it’ll stretch out the rectus femoris and believe it or not, it’ll make for a better workout - for the rectus femoris anyway.

Vastus Lateralis

The vastus lateralis is the largest muscle within the quadriceps. Unlike the rectus femoris, the vastus lateralis - along with the other muscles of the quadriceps - only crosses the knee joint. It also plays a big role in stabilizing the knee. It’s very important to stretch the quads - especially after a workout.

If you don’t and the vastus lateralis muscle becomes shortened, the kneecap (patella) will be shifted to the side and needless to say, it’ll hurt! So, the moral of the story - stretch!

Like the rectus femoris, you can emphasize the vastus lateralis when performing the seated leg extension exercise. If you really want to optimize the recruitment of the lateralis - not that you really need too - you can just point your toes towards each other. That being said, pointing your toes together when performing leg extensions places more stress on the knee so I don’t really recommend doing it. Just a cool little fact to know I suppose.

Vastus Intermedius

The vastus interedius - as the name indicates - is located in the center of the quadriceps and it actually runs underneath the rectus femoris. Like all the other muscles, the vastus intermedius helps to extend the leg - nothing exciting here.

Vastus Medialis

The vastus medialis muscle plays an important role in stabilizing the knee - particularly throughout the last 10-20 degrees of knee extension. You can also target the vastus medialis when performing the seated leg extension. You can do so by pointing your toes outwards while performing the exercise. Again, you don’t really need too. It’s just interesting to know.

Exercises For The Quads

You should follow the same sort of guidelines when training the quadriceps as you would with most other body parts. By that I mean that you should perform the compound (multi-joint) exercises prior to performing the isolation (single-joint) ones.

Of course, there’s always exceptions and one exception would be when you’re performing what’s called “pre-exhaustion” supersets. A superset is when you perform 2 or more exercises back to back without resting in between. “Pre-exhaustion” supersets are when you perform an isolation exercise and them immediately transfer into a compound movement.

The strategy works pretty well - when used in moderation - since by pre-exhausting a muscle, then performing a compound exercise which recruits additional muscles (along with the muscle you’ve just exhausted), you can bring the targeted muscle to a further degree of failure.

A specific example of an isolation-to-compound superset for the quadriceps would be performing seated leg extensions before barbell squats. The seated leg extensions will exhaust the quadriceps and when you immediately move into the barbell squat exercise - which recruit’s the muscles of the entire lower extremity - you’ll be able to work the quads to an even greater extent.

While we’re on the topic, you shouldn’t use heavy weights when performing the leg extension exercise - it’s just too risky. You don’t want to end up sustaining a knee injury. As mentioned above, you can alter your foot position (toes inwards, toes outwards) but I really don’t recommend you do so. That’s too risky too!

Now, with regards to the barbell squat exercise - which is one of the absolute best exercises you can do - there are a few progressions you can do first. The leg press is a good compound exercise for the quadriceps as are hack squats. Both are good ways to strengthen your legs while working up to barbell squats.

With both leg presses and hack squats, there are plenty of different foot positions you can use to target specific muscles. The stance variations are all discussed in detail within the actual exercise descriptions. Just click the links or select them for the exercise navigation panel to your right.

Now that you’re ready to train your quads, you just have to make sure that you train your hamstrings as well. On average, the quadriceps are between 25-33% stronger than the hamstrings - and the last thing you want to do is add to that imbalance. Doing so will only increase the risk of sustaining a hamstring injury.

So with all that being said - and now that you understand the importance of training your quadriceps - you can start by implementing a few of the exercises profiled on the navigation panel to your right.