Probably, everyone has heard about bodybuilding championships, starting with city competitions and ending with the top professional tournament “Mr. Olympia”. Do you know about the ongoing championships for the honorary title of “Mr. FEET”? Yes, it is the full development of the legs that serves as a criterion for promoting candidates to the upper steps of the pedestal. Moreover, everything is evaluated: total volumes, proportionality of muscle development, strength, endurance. Oddly enough, such competitions are held in many countries of the world, but why are only a small handful of dedicated people aware of them?
There is another, more pressing question: if you learned about such a tournament in your city, would you risk participating in it? Can you boast of the fantastic development of the muscles in your legs? Do you pay enough attention to your legs to participate in such competitions? 98% of athletes will answer these questions in the negative.
Would you like to develop your legs to a competitive level? 98% of the answers are positive. Conclusion: let’s practice!
This article discusses ways to increase muscle volume in the upper legs, that is, quadriceps, hamstrings and buttocks.
The anatomy of the hip muscles is quite complex, because in everyday life they have to perform a huge number of very precise and balanced actions necessary to maintain balance and move the whole body in space. It does not matter whether a person is walking or trying to do the most difficult somersault, a whole ensemble of muscles will always work in the legs. Some are directly related to the movement being performed, others are concerned with stabilization and coordination. From all this we draw the first conclusion: if we want to get comprehensively developed legs, we will have to train them both “for strength” and “for mass”, and also pay a lot of attention to stabilizing muscles. As for the latter, everything seems to be clear, you just need to know how specifically to train them. But about the strength and mass of a separate conversation. The thing is that each part of our body performs mainly only one function. At the feet, this function is walking or running. All muscles that work when walking should develop strictly in proportion to each other. Violation of this rule, firstly, makes a person clumsy, and secondly, it interferes with the balanced work of muscles, which will have an extremely negative effect on the overall strength of the legs, and hence on their mass.
How you see, the development of the hips is a rather multifaceted issue, so the training program is divided into four stages. Each stage contains a complete theoretical substantiation of its own necessity and specific recommendations for achieving the set goals. So:
Stage 1: LEARNING TO SQUAT
Squats are the main exercise for developing the upper legs. Squats replicate the load that the hips receive when walking or running. The weight is distributed optimally, and each muscle fiber works exactly in the mode for which it is adapted (dynamically or statically). This balance provides this exercise with an advantage in pumping the legs. In addition, squats can accelerate the overall metabolism in the body to significant speeds, and this, in turn, will provide an increase in muscle mass of the whole body. And what, in fact, are we going to study? What is so difficult about the exercise familiar to us from elementary school?
The main difficulty with barbell squats is that they involve a huge array of muscles throughout the body. They work the legs, back, abs and a bunch of small stabilizing muscles. And if at least one of these muscles is not ready to take on the weight of the bar that you are going to lift, then this attempt can be considered a failure. The bar will not submit to you.
In addition, the tension of such a number of muscles requires significant energy consumption, but the body is not going to spend the reserve energy reserves at all. And that’s why he’s lazy. How правило, подходы приседаний заканчиваются не тогда, когда устали мышцы, а тогда, когда запасы гликогена в них истощились. It would seem that it is easier than to start using glucose reserves directly from the blood? But no, reserves – they are reserves for that, to spend them only when it is very, very necessary. And try to explain to your own body that all these tortures under the barbell are done for the common good. In short, to be successful with squats, you first need to get used to them. It’s not for nothing that eminent bodybuilders of the past years tirelessly repeated to beginners: “If you don’t like doing squats, then you simply don’t know how to do them!”. Will learn.
To begin with, we will master this movement without additional weight. Stand straight, feet shoulder-width apart, look straight ahead. Put your hands behind your head and take your elbows to the sides. This position of the hands shifts the center of gravity closer to the back, so when squatting, you have to lean forward slightly. This will involve the glutes and hamstrings to a greater extent (it is the connection of additional muscles that will allow you to lift colossal weights). Try to sit down. Perform the movement slowly, trying to feel every muscle that is working at a given time. To avoid possible injury (during further work with weight), always adhere to the following rules:
The back should always remain perfectly straight and be as close to the vertical position as possible. Of course, you will not be able to keep it strictly vertical (due to anatomy), but this should be strived for as much as possible. Under no circumstances should you round or relax your back while lifting weights, this can be dangerous.
At first, place your feet at a comfortable distance for you from each other, but it is desirable that the socks point forward to increase stability.
Feet should not come off the floor throughout the entire set. It is advisable not to put various bars or pancakes from the barbell under your heels. It used to be that such tricks reduce injuries and are simply necessary for bodybuilders, but such claims have long been refuted by science. If you cannot squat to full depth without lifting your heels off the floor, then your ankle is not flexible enough. Squat as low as you can, keeping your heels on the floor. Over time, flexibility will increase by itself.
Body weight should be on the heels, and in no case on the toes. This is fraught with injury, ranging from banal stretching and ending with tissue rupture.
The shins should always move in the vertical plane of the feet. That is, do not bring your knees together while moving and do not spread apart. How правило, такие ошибки совершают новички, чьи мышцы-стабилизаторы еще совсем не привыкли к правильной работе. Even if you belong to such people, do not be discouraged, you just have to start doing squats correctly, and the body will understand everything.
Squat down smoothly. Don’t let the weight push you down to the floor. Knees are a complex and fragile mechanism. To remove the load from them, you have to shift it to the muscles. Another way to make life easier for the joints has not yet been invented.
Never “spring” from the bottom position! The movement can be both slow and fast, explosive, but, in any case, it must be in control!
The work of the muscles directly depends on the position of the bar. If you hold the barbell on your chest, almost all the load will be taken by the quadriceps. With a barbell on top of the trapezium, the load will be halved between the quads and hamstrings. When lowering the bar to the area of ​​the shoulder blades, the buttocks are included in the work.
Feel the movement without the weight? We take an empty neck and master the execution with it. We follow the above rules.
The first stage in the development of the legs will be completed only when you are fully accustomed to squats.
Stage 2: STRENGTHEN THE STABILIZERS
This is where the real training begins. The quads, hamstrings, and glutes are strength muscles. They are made for hard work. But this work is not enough to do, you need to do it well! That is, not just lift the weight, but lift it along a certain trajectory and, at the same time, keep the whole body in balance. The disadvantage of such a complex mechanism is that with weak stabilizers it is impossible to fully engage the strength muscles. As a result, we get two obvious disadvantages: reduced working weights (which means slower growth of muscle mass) and the likelihood of stagnation in the early stages of training. To save ourselves from such troubles, we will cyclically load the stabilizer muscles. To do this, we use two main methods:
Unilateral exercises. That is, we will do the main exercises for the development of the femoral muscles with each leg in turn. We squat, do lunges and even, perhaps, deadlift on one leg. This will force the body to desperately fight to maintain balance and connect as many small muscles as possible.
Exercises on an unstable support. Now, almost every gym has such devices. To achieve our goals, both leg exercises and any other exercises in which the center of weight moves in a vertical plane (for example, a bench press) will do.
And if you learn to perform unilateral exercises on an unstable support, then this will generally be “aerobatics”!