Leg workout routine I'm doing right now

Hello guys and gals, today’s post is all about legs. I never skip leg day and I always walk funny when I go out of the gym after a leg day :). As you may know, right now I am hitting legs once a week and I have a full day just for working out my legs – as part of the push, pull, legs day program I am doing at the moment.

I am not super happy with the fact that I hit my legs just once a week while the other body parts get worked out twice a week but I will make sure to focus more on legs when I change my training routine.

So, here is what I typically do in the gym for my legs.

Leg day routine

Squats – 5 x 5 reps @ 143 lbs. / 65 kg
Leg press – 5 x 12 reps @ 375 lbs. / 170 kg (3 plates on each side)
Leg curls – 3 x 12 reps – 90 lbs. / 40 kg
Calf press – 3 x 12 reps @ 286 lbs. / 130 kg (2 plates on each side)
Seated calf raises – 3 x 12 reps @ 66 lbs. / 30 kg
Lunges – 1 or 2 x 50 reps @ body weight plus a 25 lbs. / 12.5 kg barbell

I try to keep the volume and intensity high in order to compensate for the fact that I am hitting legs just once a week. I will do a separate post about training frequency and how it affects muscle growth for you shortly.

I do not go easy on legs days for two reasons:

Quads and hamstrings are the biggest muscle groups in our body and they need a lot of weight and volume to grow. Smaller body parts require less volume.
My legs have plenty of time to recover before the next leg day. For example, after an intense workout, if I do legs on Wednesday morning and I get sore muscles until Saturday or even Sunday. That means it takes 4 to 5 days for my muscle to recover and repair. It would be effective to hit them again before they are completely healed. That is why on the other body parts that I hit twice a week my volume is not high.

Going back to the exercises I do for legs, I am not completely happy with the weight I am lifting and I work on getting stronger especially on the squats and leg press because I feel that my legs are lagging behind a little bit.

I sometimes replace some of the above mentioned exercises with deadlifts or seated leg extensions depending of how I feel or if I would like to focus more on quads or hamstrings.

Also, I never include any cardio after a leg training. As I said, leg days are pretty intense and I feel like I am actually doing my cardio during my weight training. This is because the rep range for legs is on the higher side. You notice that I do around 12 reps (sometimes even 15 reps) for most of the exercises. The reason for this is because bigger muscles need higher volumes.

Before I close this out I wanted to remind you three simple things:

stay hydrated all the time
breath correctly while lifting, don’t hold your breath
have proper form and proper neck/head position

All of the above will allow you to perform better in the gym, to lift heavier weights and to progress, while minimizing the risk of injury. I actually got what they call an exertion headache while doing leg press for the simple fact that I did not take care of the three things above. This injury kept me out of the gym for more than a week. Luckily I was able to recover 100%. You can read about my experience with exertion headaches here. Don’t do the same mistake.

So, stay safe in the gym and hit them weights hard.

Over and out,

Chris