Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2115: Leg Building Masterclass

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

The importance of strong/developed legs when it comes to athletic performance, and less low back/knee pain. (1:26) Start squatting, boost your CNS! (5:55) Strong legs give you better mobility. (9:12) The biggest mistakes when it comes to training legs. (10:34) The muscles of the leg and their functions. #1- Quads. (13:09) #2 – Hamstrings. (15:57) Best exercises for the quads. (16:46) Best exercises for the hamstrings. (26:23) Total volume (sets) and reps recommended when programming. (30:30) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Vuori Clothing for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! July Promotion: MAPS Starter | MAPS Starter Bundle 50% off! **Code JULY50 at checkout** Fire up your Central Nervous System to maximize Muscular Adaptation – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #1382: Why Everyone Should Squat The ONLY Way You Should Be Doing Lunges! (Build GREAT Legs) – Mind Pump TV The Only Way You Should Be Doing Bulgarian Split Squats! (BUTT GROWTH) Sissy Squat – The forgotten quad building exercise of the pros – Mind Pump TV How To Do The Sled Push The RIGHT Way! (AVOID MISTAKES!) – Mind Pump TV Build Your Hamstrings- How to Properly do Good Mornings MAPS Anabolic Advanced - Mind Pump Media Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Steve Cook (@stevecook) Instagram Stan “Rhino” Efferding (@stanefferding) Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just tuned in to the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast ever. This is Mind Pump Rain today's episode. We talk about developing your legs. It's the legs masterclass to be more specific, we talk about working the quads and the hamstrings, best exercises,

reps, sets, function, all that good stuff. Now, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Viori, they make Ethelizia wear that feels good, fits good, you can move in it last a long time. It's great stuff, it's the best. In fact, it's one of the fastest growing Ethelizia wear companies in the world. Go check them out. Get yourself a discount. Go to vjoryclothing.com. It's v-u-o-r-i clothing.com forward slash mind pump and

On that link you'll get 20% off. We're also running a sale right now on some workout programs. We have a beginner workout program called Maps Starter. That's 50% off. And then we have a starter bundle, which is maps and a ballock and maps prime. So it's not so much a beginner program, but a great intermediate type training program. And prime is a great way to prime your body before heavy lifts. That bundle is also 50% off.

If you're interested, just go to mapsfitinistproducts.com and then use the code July 50 for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes the show. All right, today we're gonna talk about developing the muscles of the upper legs, specifically the quads and the hamstrings, very big muscles, very important muscles for lots of different reasons.

Today we're gonna talk about their function, we're gonna talk about best exercises, we're gonna talk about reps, sets, all that great stuff. If you're looking to develop amazing legs. The master class series continues. Yes, yes, sure. You know, it's interesting because the lower body in general, but you know, you're talking about the upper legs, so important for athletic performance, so important for athletic performance.

Do not skip leg, Dave. No, you need, or just performance in general, you need strong, well-developed leg muscles. And then this translates to aesthetics. All the, now I know that there's a lot of, especially guys out there that will skip leg day because you can hide your legs, right, with pants. But when you expose them, everybody,

by the way, guys, every girl will tell you this. If you get down to your skivis, and your legs look like you don't work them out, and you have a well-developed upper body, not only is it, doesn't look right, it's a turn off. And why? Because we primarily know that this person doesn't have good function.

This person can't move well, so don't skip legding. Yeah, well, to your athletic point, I mean, it's really where you're going to generate all your power. I mean, your legs are responsible for, you know, driving all of that explosive movement and getting your body to do all these like crazy athletic moves necessary to be a great athlete. So it's highly important.

Now, do you guys think I feel like this has changed a lot The the amount of guys that don't train legs when I was a teenager and lifting weights nobody like there was like one friend That trained his legs. Yep. Where now when I think of like all my male friend I don't know if this is someone of a bias because I've got no I guess that's what I do for career. I'm centered around mostly coaches and trainers and with that So maybe there's definitely a bias with me. That's why I'm asking. But it feels like it's the opposite now. Where most everybody I know, he trains legs.

But maybe I have one friend who's a leg skipper, but most do not. I would say skipping legs still happens, but way less. And I think it's because of the popularity of the barbell movements. The barbell squat and then like cross it really. That's another thing I think CrossFit did a really good job is getting the bros to squat and there's lots and lots of memes, you know when the memes stuff start happening and the internet kind of became a thing. Shame works sometimes. It does.

Guys will help bring back you can't bring back shit. It's not as big campaigning for bringing back shit. We need it. You know a back to athletic point. So just to hammer that home, people think, oh yeah, you got to run. That's why you need powerful legs. No, no, no. Pick an upper body movement. Throw a ball.

Try not to use your legs. Throw a punch. Try not to use your legs. You're gonna have a, you're gonna generate a fraction of the power or you're gonna be able to throw a ball, a fraction of the distance without having good coordination and strength from the lower body. This is a terrible example, but I was just thinking about like trading water in a pool, right?

And then you're trying to throw a ball or trying to throw a punch. Like you have no, no grounding, no anchoring there to really like, you know, establish the whole rest of your body, which produces a lot of force through these muscles and your legs. By the way, I will also say this, more back pain comes from weak legs than a weak back. A lot of people think back pain comes from a weak back. Oftentimes it comes from a weak lower body. And then the back has to do work that it can't support. I think it's actually, I think that that was a major contributor to my low back pain. Remember I talked about having low back pain for a really long time.

I think I had a week lower legs from not squatting or doing any of that stuff when I was a teenager. And it wasn't until first I started squatting and then I started deep squatting to that completely go away. Completely. And I think it has a lot to do just with weakness in my legs. And so the lower back was over compensating a lot in a lot of my movements. Yeah.

So I totally agree. When you bend over to pick something up or you know, you're doing stuff where your back is active, the lower body is what's supporting it. And if the lower body can't do it, then the back has to do most of the work. And this is why you see lots of back injuries.

This is actually weakness and immobility or mobility issues in lower body. And then of course core and low back plays a role. But if you have bad back problems and you don't strengthen the lower body, the chances of you really fixing the root cause are actually very small. You know, the irony around the young teenage boy skipping legs too is that, I mean, at least if you can identify as the insecure skinny boy who wanted to build and be bigger, I mean, at least if you can identify as the insecure skinny boy who wanted to build and be bigger. I mean, how fixated were you on the scale?

And how fixated were you on just being bigger in general? How funny is that? And you worked it, you don't work it like that. Oh my God. I mean, half a while, I don't think I could ever get under 200 pounds anymore, just because my legs. My legs are so much thicker and heavier now than they were when I was a teenager that I don't think I could get my weight down because of how thick and big they are compared to when I was younger. And yet, that was the thing I was so insecure about as a teenage boy was being this skinny looking light kid, you know?

You know what's funny is I talk, I've talked about this on the show. There was that summer, I want to say between sophomore and junior here, maybe in high school, it might have been that year where that summer where I gained, I don't know, close to like 14 or 15 pounds. Probably came from way. Which is what? That's when I squatted and deadlifted. Yeah.

And I remember the, all my pants stopped fitting me. Like all of a sudden I couldn't wear any of my jeans because my legs and my butt had grown. And that's where a lot of the weight, I mean, I guarantee you that 14 pounds, 10 of it probably went to my legs. Well, I know I'm not alone too.

And even you start like, barbell squatting like what that does for your upper body, where I get... I saw gains, like in my shoulders and my chest, and my what? Like, just from adding that in is another, you know, big lift up. Yeah, not to go off on a tangent,

but a lot of people don't know this, that there is a strange limiting factor to how much muscle you can build that has to do with the rest of your body. So if the rest of your body is very underdeveloped, the part of your body that you do train will only go so far. And they actually shown this in studies. For example, they'll have studies where somebody will have a leg that's immobilized, like in a cast, let's say, and they'll train the leg that can move, or they'll do have people

who don't train you the leg. The people who train the leg that they can move lose less muscle in the immobilized leg. So there's like this interesting communication that goes on, but it makes sense because your body doesn't necessarily think in terms of muscle groups rather as a whole because when you move, you move. Or movement-based.

I think a lot of that has to do too, or at least I speculate, a lot of that has to do with the CNS and what you miss out on by not squatting and deadlifting. And I love your, and this is why I've always loved your analogy with the amplifier and speakers when we speak of our central nervous system being the amplifier, our speakers being speakers being your muscles. And you put so much emphasis on building the muscles or getting big speakers, but little effort towards really developing, strengthening, and building a CNS.

And I mean, what builds the CNS, the ability to fire and be strong like a deadlift in a squat. And I think that is worth it. Like, everybody knows, or not everybody knows. A lot of people have heard that if you are stuck on your bench and you can't get your bench up to build your legs up and it goes up. I think that has even though you can make the case

for leg drive supporting some of that, I think it's less to do with leg drive and then it's the overall development and improvement of the CNS firing that carries over into that. That would be what I would. Oh, if you don't, if you're like, let's say you just love to bench press,

you never work out your legs, and you're trying to get your bench press to start squatting. Yeah. And you probably will see a increase in on lock things. It's really weird, right? And then mobility.

And now in the fitness space when we talk about mobility, people think of like, you know, being able to get in weird positions, and flexibility, and twisting all that stuff. But in the most literal sense, mobility as a human in the modern world is you're able to go places, you're able to get up and walk and move, and when you get older, as you get older, one of the biggest contributors to loss of independence

is your loss of lower body mobility, even more so than upper body mobility, your inability to get up and get back down or falls because you lose strength in your lower body are tremendous. I mean I have older people in my family and you watch what happens them sitting down just getting up off the couch even having to get different types of toilet seats and handles so they can sit down and use the bathroom and if they fall down the ground their legs aren't strong enough to get themselves back up like in its most literal sense strong legs give you great mobility or at least it will be maintained it for the rest of your life. So the case is essentially we're making the

case that leg development is extremely important, extremely important. And then from a Stetics standpoint, weak looking legs means you probably look weak overall athletes know this, but I think the average person knows this just inherently. You see somebody and you can see the whole body and if you see a huge contrast between upper and lower body, it doesn't look right. They don't look like they're strong. They're strong. For those that are training legs, what comes to mind is like some of the biggest mistakes

that people make. Like, what do you, like the people that are training legs, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you would recall? Well, I would say not doing the best exercises. It's a really big one. I would say that's number one. Yeah, that's gotta be number one. And then, you know, not treating a lower body,

or any exercise in general, but specifically lower body ones like squats as a skill. But rather, I'm gonna do these until I get tired. Yeah. To make squats and dead lifts and lunges and all these great exercise for lower body effective, you have to perfect the skill of those exercises. Otherwise, they're not.

So I would agree exercise selection as number one, number two, treating those exercises like a skill getting good at them so that you could perform the well. And then three, I would say neglecting the hamstrings. Yeah. I there's so many more pieces of equipment that address the quads. And people don't see don't see as many hamstring exercises. You don't see it's on your backside. And I think most people neglect post ear chain as it is. And the hamstring still is a really big muscle.

And when you want like, shapely, thick, good looking legs, like developing the backside is as important as the front. Well, into that point, I even feel like hip-hinging movements don't get a lot of attention to your everyday average person in regards to like a squat, like a squat's a little bit more known, but like to really do a good hip-hing movement and add load to that, takes a bit more education. It does. And then, you know, from an athletics standpoint, hamstring injuries are very common because

you see an imbalance with quad strength. Over dominant quads. Yeah, hamstring can't keep up. I forget what the percentage is. Your hamstrings, is it 60 or 80 percent they need to be able to do in order? I think it's, I think I want to say 60%. But I would say, I mean, God, how many times more often do hamstrings get injured than quads? Oh, yeah. It's kind of rare. It's what's slowing you down. It's decelerators. And so it's

definitely one of the more common ones for athletes. It is. It's a very common one, so it's important to develop them. Now to be fair, a barbell squat done properly develops a whole leg, but you want to do some exercises that kind of target the hamstrings, hip-pinging real important. I talked about back pain earlier. Besides the glutes, the hamstrings are probably one of the most important muscles for back health because it helps you hinge at the hips. And if those are weak, then it's all gonna be lumbar spine.

It keeps you up, right? It is. So let's start with the quads. We'll start there first. Now quadriceps, quad, meaning four, they named it that because there's four heads to the quadriceps. There's the vasis lateralis, vasis medialis, intermedius,

basically outer, inner, you know, kind of middle quad. Those are those three heads and you have the rectus femoris, which kind of goes down the middle and covers a whole thing. And really the function of the quads is to extend the knee. So if you bend your knee and they kick it out, that's what the quads do essentially. And then they stabilize the kneecap. The kneecap kind of floats over a joint on your femur, and really strong, good, healthy quads.

Keeps that knee cap from grinding in one area or another or from popping out to left or to right. In fact, when I dislocate a my knee cap, so the outside, yeah, the same thing. Yeah, I was just gonna point that out that so much that you could injure your knee sometimes and the quad will help stabilize that. Yeah, so when I dislocated my knee cap when I was a kid, my left one, and it popped out

to the outside, the physio told me to strengthen the, you know, the teardrop muscle of the quad. And it is very important for stabilizing. Well, I so it extends, extends, extends. I couldn't figure out why I didn't feel like anything was that wrong when I tore my ACL on an MCL because and the doctor, this is right at the height of like me being building a lot of muscle. I was pretty much like and playing basketball

and then I tore it. And the initial injury hurt. And then of course the next day when I was swelling hit in, but mechanically I felt okay. I didn't really feel like something, even though we did the action. Yeah, and I was, remember asking, I'm like, really this, I tore action. Yeah, they're like really challenging. Yeah, and I was, I remember asking, like, really? This, I tore it, like it feels like I'm okay.

And he's like, no, no, you definitely tore it. The reason why you feel okay is you've done such a good job of developing all the surrounding muscles that support this floating joint. And so even though you're missing important ligaments right now, you've got like some good support on it. That's how, that's how, how crucial it can be to build and develop muscle around those knees. So think about that as we age, just protecting the knees or

like some of the most common surgeries that you hear out there in the elderly. And so, you know, that's another thing that's so important about building those, those, the quadriceps and building those legs in general is because it supports that joint and that joint is one of the most common joints that you hear people getting surgery. It is. And now, although I did say it extends the knee, people might think, oh, the best exercises are ones that just extend the knee. Not true. Like most muscles, they develop best when they're trained with other muscles. And what are called compound lifts, we'll get to that a little later in the episode. But I just want to say that because once I mention the function,

I think sometimes, oh, I'm just gonna do exercise of the leg extension only. And that does work the quad, but it's not gonna develop the quads nearly to the degree or with the same functional strength as other exercises. Then we have the hamstrings. Hamstrings on the back of the leg, you have three muscles, the bicep femoris,

the semi-member nosos, semi-tendinosis. And these muscles flex the knee, meaning they bend in the back, so it's like you're trying to kick yourself with your heel, right? That's what that muscle does, and it flexes the hip, or sorry, extends the hip, I should say. So it's like if you bend over and stand up, the hamstrings help stand you up. And they also involve some rotation of the hip.

And that's what those muscles do. Now, most people when they think hamstring exercises, they think leg curls, which is true, but you're missing out on a lot of development by just focusing on leg curls. Hip, I would say, really extending at the hips is where you're gonna get most of the development of the hamstring muscles.

Which we'll get it all those exercises. So let's get to some of the best exercises. Now there's going to be carryover with some of these exercises because some of these exercises work both the quadriceps and the hamstrings. The king of all exercises, which is widely known as the king of all exercise, is a lower body exercise. It's known as the King of All Exercise because of its effect on overall muscle, mass, performance, strength, when you get good at it,

protecting the back and the knees and the hips and just functional. And that's a barbell squat. It's one of the best exercises you do period into story, but it's a phenomenal quad and hamstring exercise. But I would say it's more quad dominant than hamstring dominant. Would you guys agree? Yeah.

No, it's just if you're trying to develop your quads, this 100% has to be in your arsenal for sure. It's just squat. And back to your original point, not only squatting, but continuing to treat it as a skill and get better at it, because that's one of the beautiful things about the squat is the reason why I think the benefits continue and continue on for so long and it's so much more than almost any other exercise

is because the difficulty of getting good at it and you're continuously seeing gains where let's say we do an exercise like you mentioned, leg extensions, the body is going to adapt to that movement, relatively quick because of the simplicity of it. You sit down on a machine, you're stable, you're supported, it's on a track,

all you're doing is extending the knee at, very, very little skill involved, and even though it's stimulating the quadracepally well, it's not very long before the body starts to adapt. It would be familiar with it quickly. Yeah, versus a squat, You could spend years squatting. And you can load it different. And there's all kinds of different ways

to approach a squat. And so you can emphasize it a bit more. So it's anterior front loaded. So now yeah, your quads are gonna be a little bit more enhanced in terms of like that specific exercise. So there's a lot of different ways to keep that fresh and keep your body responding from these things. But it But it's more, it's also not just scale acquisition that lasts a long time. It's also scale maintenance. If you can do a

full squat with load until the day you die in your 90s, you can do pretty much you can walk, you can sit, you can climb, you've got great mobility in your ankles and your hips and your knees, good stability. So it's just one of the few exercises that's good in almost every category. Athletic performance, like very few exercises have the carryover of a barbell squat for just athletic performance, jumping, running,

sprinting, stopping, I mean, punching, kicking, it's got lots of carryover. So it's like this general, amazing exercise that everybody should probably do. There's also this part to it is we know that one of the best ways to stimulate growth in any muscle is novelty. First time the body is being attacked that way.

It's like, oh my God, the body has to adapt overcome and the result is the building of muscle and within the squat there is so many novel ways to squat front squat back low squat high bar low bar Sumo squats narrow squats tippy toe squats front squat. Yeah, you literally can do it has like those squats. Yeah, you literally can do it. It has like eight different novel exercises within one exercise. That is a huge difference than going over and going like, oh, look at that leg extension machine there. And then I'll try this other variation of that leg extension machine or leg press. That's right. Yeah. Right. Like the two options. Those two or those two are closer together than a front squat is to a sumo barbell back squat.

Like those are so different and yet then they get so much and because it's novel again, you're gonna continue to get more benefit. So you could live within the squat and all the different variations of it and get tremendous results from the quads just doing that. Yeah.

And then there's split stance exercises like lunges Yeah, I remember this is way back right so when I was training people in the late 90s early 2000s lunges believe or not relegated to like Cardioclasts a road jazz or size or something. Yeah, and it wasn't until I remember when this happened It was Ronnie Coleman. It was Mr. Olympia There was a video of him doing walking lunges with the barbells. And the yellow spandids.

Yeah, and he's doing them in the parking lot. And obviously he was like the guy is a monster. And all of a sudden the lunges became like this. Oh, this is a great, never see bodybuilders do that. Yeah, now everybody does. I'll leave you. The truth is lunges and split stance exercises have always been super valuable.

It's essentially a one-legged squat with a, you know, one leg in the back giving you support. It's also putting the split stance, which mimics running and walking. Yeah. The strengthens the pelvis because of the torsion and... Oh, dare I say one of the more functional exercise you could do.

Absolutely. So lunges, phenomenal. And then up there is Bulgarian split stance squats, which are similar to lunges, but different. And both of those are a go to if I have a client who isn't, isn't ready to barbell back squat. Yeah. So I know the goal is to get this client to barbell back squat because I know of all the benefits that we can reap from it. But if I'm limited for whatever reasons, whether it be injury, skill, or all the above, Bulgarian split squats or lunges is a great substitute on the way of improving or getting that person to squat. 100%. And then isolation, we said leg extensions,

very easy isolation exercise for the quads. If you want to take it a step up, if you're more into like the, you know, what you want more functionality, you want more strength, you want more muscle. Try a Sissy Squarange emotion. Yeah, like a Sissy Squar is much more challenging and is I would call it an isolation mass builder, isolation muscle builder. I would pair it against a leg extension all day long. I don't even do, I haven't done a leg extension on a machine like seriously for years and years and years. Once I discovered Cissy Squats that started doing those, I was like, why would I ever do a leg extension? This is so much better. So much value to that to exercise. And it's funny because

it's one of those exercises that like if you Performed it back in the day everybody would stop you and be like don't do it Yeah, your knees is crazy. What are you thinking even though it's like fifth done right and you're you know going to your limits and You know where you can comfortably control and stabilize like it it is such a great master I I really I love the regression that Steve cooked it the other day. I hadn't seen somebody do that I don't know why I didn't think to do this either. I've always done a Sissy squat where I'm holding onto a squat rack as like support. And he actually did it within the squat rack

and he did bandists. Oh yeah. So he's holding onto the bands. And he gives him more assistance on the way down. Yes. And you can adjust that by the thickness of the band. You want a lot of assistance when you get down, then get a thicker band. You want just a little bit of assistance, then get a thinner band.

I thought that was brilliant. Now, you didn't list hack squats or leg press. Why? Those are good exercises, but there are machines. There's less carryover to the real world. You're stuck to the confines of the machine, where the sled goes, where the plate is, where the back pad is. If you're taller than average, shorter than average,

your mobility's different than average. It's not super great. The carryover to the real world isn't, I mean, you can add a 200 pounds to your leg press is not going to give you the same carryover as a 30 pound increase on your barbell squat. So just to give you the same carry-overs, a 30-pound increase on your barbell squat. So just to give you an example, range of motion is shorter. I mean, bodybuilders like them because they like to isolate and squeeze in hypertrophy

purposes, but I mean, you can never do those and do just the other exercise and you would develop. So I agree with you, but I'm going to add in these three exercises, Audible mentions, because I do see value, don't explain where they're at. One, two, if you don't mention it. The hack squats, the leg press, and then, what was the third?

Heels elevated gubbut. No, I wasn't even thinking of a gubbut, because I would put that under squatting. Yeah, that's just okay. Oh, and then sled drive. Oh yeah, we'll sled the first. Okay, so those are the three of the three of the three. Okay, sled drive, leg press, and hack squat.

And here's where all three of those actually kind of work similarly to how I would program these, if I'm someone who's really focused on building their legs, is those are all three great volume builders. So the core of the core of my programming, the core of my training is built around all the ones you said. Like that's my main focus always. Now I'm feeling good, I got an extra day in the gym.

I want to, or I've been running my program for a while. I feel like my legs can take a little more volume. I'm dipping into those three. Agreed, that's great. So now I'm adding leg press, now I'm adding sled in there, now I'm adding hack squat in there to, or I'm using it to give me a break because I overreached on some of the big compound lifts.

So let's say I've been crushing it and I hit barbell back squats and on my second time of supposed to be hitting barbell back squats again this week or a variation in front squats or something and I'm still a little fried. I'm a little fried, my low back is a little fried or a little taxing on my hips maybe.

So maybe I'm gonna do drive the sled or leg press or hack squat because I want to pull back a little bit and because I over reach a little bit. So those three are in my arsenal and I'm going to use because I love those three movements also, but as a way of complimenting the core ones that you put in there. Yeah, I love those. Alright, let's get to the hamstrings. So hamstrings we talked about how they extend the hip and bend the knee.

So let's talk about some of the best exercises. Well, it's gotta be the best ones, gotta be deadlifts in all the different variations of deadlifts, stiff legged, Romanian, your sumo, your conventional deadlift. Even just a regular conventional deadlift is a phenomenal hamstring movement. I love it. In fact, I have it. I almost, I'll do stiff-legged deadlifts and

Romanian deadlifts, but they're not in my weekly routine. But conventional deadlifts are, and my hamstrings have always been strong and well developed from conventional deadlifts. So all those deadlift variations, very functional strengthens the back, as well as the hamstrings, develops wonderful, strong looking hamstrings, also involves the glutes. Those have to be at the top for sure. Are you including good warnings in that conversation? That's a good question. I think you could, right?

Although it's not really a deadlift, I guess we have to say good morning separately. Yeah, I mean, I think a good morning has to be in there. I know you put leg-curl physio balls in there, which I like those also, but I would say for building my hamstrings, getting big developed hamstrings, the good morning, because you could load. Oh, good morning. Yeah. I mean, good good mornings. In fact, some people can load a good morning more than they can, like a deadlift. If you have a weaker grip, for example, like you don't, you can't hold on to a lot of weight, a good morning, sometimes people are good at it.

So what a good morning does, that's really good that I like, is it, if you have trouble really maintaining tall posture with a deadlift, you can't, you won't get away with it at a good morning. It teaches you, I mean, it forces you into good, thoracic posture and good posture. Otherwise, it's gonna be all lower back. You do a good morning. It teaches you, I mean it forces you into good, thoracic posture and good, otherwise it's gonna be all lower back.

You do a good morning wrong. Just a little bit, oh this is, I'm doing this wrong. So if you could do a good good morning, you could do a good deadlift. It's not true the other way around. I agree, that's the other reason why I really like a good morning is it can be more challenging, but it forces you into good form.

Or else the, you feel it. Yeah, or the bar comes rolling over the top of your head. So, where a deadlift, you could totally have a rounded back, a bad form, a technique, and get the bar up, and not even realize that you're training a bad pattern, bad form because of your technique, and you're still able to get the bar off. Whereas, a good morning in order to perform the good morning, it requires good force. It's hard to have bad form and actually do the full exercise. and you're still able to get the bar off, whereas a good morning in order to perform the good morning,

it requires good for us. It's hard to have bad form and actually do the full exercise. You're right. And we talk about an exercise that fell out of favor because it looks scary and now it's popular again because everybody knows how awesome it is, but that was an exercise that old school strength athletes did all the time.

In fact, they used to compete for strength over it. It was actually a strength exercise back in the day and you'd see guys doing that with four or five hundred pounds. And then it fell out of favor because of all of a sudden, everybody said, don't bend over it's bad for your back. Well, that's what you do with the good one. Well, it's interesting. Yeah, because you'll see some of these kind of more extreme exercises that are making a comeback, like even the Nordic curls are making it come back and Jefferson. And so it's one of those things where it's like, you know, I think, I think as these start to kind of make their way back and people understand

the actual technique that you educated on them better, like they can start kind of pursuing, you know, outside of our conventional ones, but I think these conventional ones are the bangers. Yeah, so just, you know, just general, right? When we're doing these exercises and we're working in hamstrings, we're trying to do hip flexion and extension, not lumbar or low back, right?

So picture somebody standing straight up if you can think of this person and you're gonna chop your hips. Now, imagine them bending forward at the hips so their back is totally straight the whole time. So it's like they're sticking their butt out and then coming back up versus rounding their back and coming up.

That's the difference between hip flexion extension and lumbar flexion and extension. It's the hip flexion extension we're looking for. If you've never trained or done strength training or done these exercises, it's gonna feel weird. It's gonna be hard to even get into the position to do this right. So this is, you really gotta perfect the skill

to make this exercise effective. And of course they're very safe when you do this right. So you really got to perfect the skill to make this exercise effective. And of course, they're very safe when you do them right. You do them wrong, they're not so safe. Now, what is a research support as far as total volume? Is it equal to upper body, or have we shown that you can actually handle more volume on the lower body than the upper body? So it's interesting you say that. I think it would depend on the lower body than the upper body. So, it's interesting you say that.

I think it would depend on the exercise and the lift. There's always a range, right? So total volume per body part, you'll always see anywhere between 9 to 18 sets per body part. Well, how can I do 18 sets for legs? Well, you're probably not going to be doing a lot of barbell squats and deadlifts. No. But what about 9?

How can I make 9 work? Well, now you're probably doing more barbell squats and deadlifts. No. But what about nine? How can I make nine work? Well, now you're probably doing more barbell squats and deadlifts. So, you know, total volume, you have to equate the exercise and the intensity and then all the other factors that play a role. But these big gross motor movement exercises like squats and deadlifts, like you could do less of them

and get better results than you would doing more of a lot of other exercises. Okay, so I want to piggyback off that point to the one that I was making earlier about volume builders. So then what that looks like mathematically of structuring a program is when I'm choosing my hamstring and my quad exercises, I want at least nine to 12 sets of those 18, at least nine to 12 of those 18 sets coming from those big lists. Yes.

And then the rest of the rest of these other exercises, you probably won't need to do anything else That's right if you want that's why I like it that's the idea is the idea is that if I'm getting nine to 12 Sets from these the big ones that we we talked about is like the primary ones that we would build our program around that I'm I'm okay like I'm gonna build a pretty damn good for season. Now I have room to push it up to 15, 18, 12, I'm based off of how well I'm sleeping, how well I'm eating, how good my body is feeling from it, that I could scale the volume up, and that's where I'm gonna use those other tools.

And it beats your advantage to pick some of those exercises that don't do quite as much damage. That's right. That's right. And recover a little bit better like your sled pushes, your sled drives, your sled drives, your sled, uh, uh, yeah, yeah, and, and, and now I want to add this more isn't better. So, uh, if you can do more, that just means you can do more and recover.

It doesn't necessarily mean you're going to do better for a lot of people, less is better. So the way you judge how many sets you can do is not how many sets you can tolerate, or rather how many sets gives you the best results. How much you could tolerate is more than what is ideal. Ideal is ideal. So you want to aim for ideal. So it's not like don't push the volume to, oh, okay. The most I can handle is 18 sets.

Let me work with the net. No, no, wait, see where your results come from and be like, oh, I get best results at nine. Then more won't do any better. Stick with the one that works the best. So I have a, I have a small hack for, and I know the next one of the next points you're going to make is the rep ranges, right? Anything between one and 25 reps, there's value of building muscle in there. But I have like a small hack for men and a small hack for women. If you're a woman, I challenge you to,

you know, do the singles doubles and triples and, you know, under five reps, add that into your arsenal. Like powerlifting. Because most of my female clients neglected the five or under rep ranges and they saw significant benefits to building their butt, their legs, their lower body, when they train that way. My men, 20 rep range.

There's gold and that's a little bit of stand efforting who I know touts that a lot. There's so much, and I think the guys, tend to go the other way. Guys love maxing out and saying they squat or deadlift a bunch of weight. Really ever do they put a weight on the bar that they could rep out 20 to 25 reps.

And you wanna see your legs grow, put 20, do 20 reps set sometimes. Now, intensity wise, for most people, you're looking to train with high intensity, but you're not looking to train to failure. Although failure training has value, the programming with failure training and the type of individual it works for

is it's not a majority, it's a minority. We have a program called Maps and a Ball of Advance that does that. But for most people, you wanna train with a weight that allows you to perform your target rep range between like we said, one to 25, that you could do, let's say you do 10 reps, you could have done 12, but you stopped at 10.

So always think of that, like, okay, I think I could do maybe two more or three more. I'm gonna stop the reps here. That's the intensity that you wanna be at. So it's a high intensity, but you're not pushing yourself until you can't do any more. And that studies have shown to be the sweet spot

for most people. Yeah, and again, stressing the skill. I think, I mean, off the top of my head, I can't think of a muscle group that has more skill exercises in than the lower body, right? Oh, yeah. Wouldn't you say that? I agree with that.

So really, when you get to lower body, a lot of these movements, we talk about so much of them are skill and practice. It may perform very deliberately. Yeah, and I know I challenged the low wraps and lifting heavy, and we know that load is going to help out with growing, but there's so much room to perfect this movement and get good at moving like, you know, treat that when you go into these workouts,

when you're doing these exercises, to get perfect. And this is why, when we gave you the set count for the week, you could do all those sets in one workout, but you're probably better off practicing more frequently and dividing those up. So rather than doing nine sets of leg exercises on one day a week, you're probably, and most people will get better results doing, you know, nine sets of spread out over three workouts.

So three sets on each workout because you can practice more frequently because fatigue isn't going to play as big of a role in your technique, your pressure. Most people are going to get better results dividing those sets up by a bunch of workouts rather than doing them all in one or two workouts. That's true for most people. Look, if you love the show, head over to Instagram, go to myump Media. We actually give well planned workouts and exercises there for very low costs. It's under $5 a month. MindPump Media on Instagram.

You can also find all of us on Instagram, if you wanna follow us. So Justin is at MindPump Justin. I'm at MindPump to Stefano and Adam is at MindPump Adam. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at minepumpmedia.com.

The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing

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