Quads are huge muscles positioned right above your knees. They have the opportunity to grow to huge proportions, especially if you exercise them correctly. Nevertheless, modern bodybuilders rarely take the time to put in enough effort into these muscles so they are often much less developed than their full potential allows them. More often than not, the squat rack and leg presses that you do in the gym are not enough or you’re not doing them correctly, so let’s take a look at some of the biggest mistakes that people make when trying to buff up their legs.
1. Incorrectly Targeting Areas
It’s a common gym myth that if you want to improve your quads on the account of exercising your glutes, you should position your feet a little bit forward. It doesn’t matter if you’re doing hack squats or using a Smith machine, this myth always comes into the conversation as “fact”. You would be surprised to learn that this isn’t the case. It even goes to that extent that a lot of bodybuilders think that positioning your feet wider apart will help with their outer quads, while having them more narrow than shoulder width will help with the inner quads and other muscles on the inside of your leg.
This is also false – the truth is that most bodybuilders don’t even know how to target the four quads (vastus lateralis, medialis and intermedius, as well as the rectus femoris), nor do they know how to exercise the many muscles located on the inside of your upper thigh.
Here’s how to fix this:
2. You’re Shortening Your Range of Motion!
You can see this as soon as you walk in the gym. People put so much weight on their leg press that they can only do half a rep at most, and their knees don’t even bend the entire way down! If you take a look at the squat racks, the exact same thing happens, as well as the hack squat machines and the ones for leg extensions. When you see a bodybuilder working on his quads, the chances are that he’s not doing it right – instead, doing half of the motion while completely abandoning the other half.
This is because when you do complete sets will all of the intended reps, it gets really difficult and when you perform that same number but with half-reps, it gives you the illusion that you’re actually training as hard as you wanted. This means that more often than not, quadriceps muscles get less exercise and are being tasked with shorter, easier reps. If you do this you’re not only limiting the movement, you are also unnecessarily limiting your own progress.
Here’s how to fix this:
3. Going Too Heavy
This is almost always in connection to the previous mistake. When you put too much weight on your machine, you are increasing the possibility of not being able to lift the entire thing for the necessary number of times. This happens mostly when you’re doing leg presses because of the high likeliness that you can lift more weight with this exercise than with other ones.
When you do this, it makes you think you’re really strong when you’re actually not doing anything to benefit your body. When you see someone lift 700 pounds for half-reps instead of 450 for the full and necessary reps, you want to do the same and most of the time that’s your mistake. When you’re doing deep squats you may even want to do pyramids until you reach just one or two squats with a whole lot of weight on them, but this is incorrect. The only thing you’re improving is your ego, not your muscles.
Here’s how to fix this:
4. Squatting With Incorrect Form
When you’re doing squats, you should of course strive to have the bar parallel to the ground. However, even if you don’t, this is not the worst thing you can mess up. I’ve seen people lean so forward that their hips are way back. This way, they’re putting the pressure on their hips, backs and glutes instead of their quads. This way of doing squats also carries a risk of injury – you could damage your spinal erectors, so if you don’t know how to do barbell squats with the correct form, don’t try to do them and don’t throw on a ton of weight just to impress other people in the gym. You could leave on a stretcher or worse. Practice your form until you no longer have any flaws – it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Here’s how to fix this:
5. Failing at Failure
When you’re training your legs, more often than not you’re doing pushing movements such as front squats, walking lunges and leg presses. If you do these with full intensity it will make your thighs feel like they’ve just been hit with a flamethrower and since it’s so uncomfortable most people don’t spend enough time experiencing that burn. If you regularly do superset biceps and triceps workouts or forced reps of bench presses and side lateral drop sets, it’s highly unlikely that you will be able to put the same pressure on your legs as well, just because it’s going to hurt too much.
As I said, the number of bodybuilders who actually go all the way through the pain is not very high, instead most of them take to low-rep training. If you want to reach the maximum possible intensity, you want to do the following – reach muscle failure on five and then on fifteen reps. It won’t hurt as much when you reach those 15 and experience failure. When you do those two sets, get up and do a 15 rep set of hack squats or lunges. This will help you reach the maximum possible progress in a single workout.
Here’s how to fix this:
Source: http://www.fitnessandpower.com/training/bodybuilding-misc/top-5-leg-training-mistakes
The post Top 5 Leg Training Mistakes & How To Correct Them appeared first on AnabolicMinds.com.
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