Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:12 Leg extension
02:21 Seated leg curls
04:52 Dorsiflex the ankles
06:49 Lying leg curls
07:57 Toe squats
09:29 Outro
Transcript:
In this video, I’m going to give you some simple evidence based tips to make your training more effective. Let’s start with the leg extension.
Now you might think, what could you possibly do wrong in a leg extension? It’s a machine with a completely fixed motion. However, there are a few things that you can do differently. If you start with this, which is the way the most people perform it, you can stop, the first thing you can do is put the back rest all the way back. You basically want it as far back as you can because the rectus femoris, which is the middle muscle in the quads, it flexes the hip. So it does this, which means that the more upright you are, the more you’re like this, the more this muscle is bunched up together, it’s at a shorter length. Now, research has found that it has lower muscle activity when it’s in this position compared to when it’s a bit more lengthened. And research has also subsequently found that you get more muscle growth in specifically the rectus femoris, the middle part of the quads, when you lean back during your leg extensions, which is in line with multiple other studies, finding that muscles generally grow more when they are trained at longer muscle lengths.
In the same vein, what you can do, many leg extensions, this is a great machine cause this is Mike Israetel’s gym, but many leg extensions are not so great and they don’t allow you to achieve full range of motion. So in this machine, you can put it all the way back and that’s what you want to do. You want to put it as far down all the way back as you can, if the machine allows that, more range of motion, more flexion in the knee – better. But, so you get a very nice full range of motion this way, and don’t let the weight deload in the bottom position, by the way. You can do that if you want to turn it into a cluster set or something, but generally maintaining high muscle tension and long muscle lengths is great. Now what you can do, let’s say you have a normal machine which is more like this, then you can move up forward a little bit. So especially when you’re leaning back, you want to make sure that you, you don’t close the knee angle. Because if you, if you could sit back, all the way, you see that the knee goes back and the knee angle is less. So this is like 90 degree, and now if you come forward, move this way, you can increase the range of motion by moving down in the leg extension machine. So especially when your machine doesn’t allow for a great range of motion, really sitting back and letting your knees come forward allows you to still kind of close that knee angle and use more range of motion for your quads, which should get you more quad gains.
Now let’s talk about seated leg curls. For seated leg curls kind of the opposite applies as for a leg extension. You might think based on the previous tips that you want to sit all the way back, like she’s doing right now. In fact, the hamstrings, they cross the hip as well and the more back you are, the more it flexes the hamstrings, the more it shortens them, and you can lengthen them by flexing them at the hip. And one study found that if you do seated leg curls you get more muscle growth in the hamstrings compared to lying leg curls and the growth occurs specifically in the heads of the hamstrings that cross the hip. So there was no more muscle growth in the short head of the biceps femoris because that head of the hamstrings does not cross the hip, it’s purely active at the knee. So the hamstrings, they extend the knee, like Romanian deadlift and…. Or… *They extend the hip like in Romanian deadlift and they flex the knee like in a leg curl. What you, therefore, want to do is you want to sit a little bit forward.
What you can even do beyond the position of which is comfortable, if in this case, you’re in a seated leg curl machine, which is often the case that the weights now touch each other. So the plates are literally touching each other on the stack. That means there’s currently no tension on the hamstrings, right? If you perform the movement and you go all the way up and the weights touch each other again, so at that point you hear the weights clanking into each other, that means you lose muscle tension. Now, if you have a great machine like this one, you can move it up and you generally want to move it up as much as possible, again, to train the hamstrings over the greatest range of motion and the greatest functional excursion, as it’s called an exercise science, which means that the hamstrings have a very large muscle length change during the movement, and you get very high tension on the hamstrings at a long muscle length.
Now, what you can do if you cannot do that in a machine, is to move up a little bit more, and you can, even if you bend over all the way over the machine, all the way forward, and now let that come up, and now the weights are not touching each other. And you probably feel the stretch, right? So in this you’ll feel a lot of stretch in hamstrings. That’s basically the position you want to be in that you cannot voluntarily get rid of the tension. So the only way to now deload the weight is to go back and now the weight deloads, you hear it, you hear the clang. So that’s a way that if your leg extension machine does not allow you to use full range motion, you can still actually get that high muscle lengthened hamstrings and constant muscle tension, so you also get a better pump if you’re into that by leaning forward in the machine. So for leg extensions: you lean back, seated leg curls: you lean forward.
A second tip that applies to all leg curls, not just seated leg curls is to dorsiflex the ankles. So most people they kind of do them in a neutral position like this. But what you want to do is to dorsiflex the ankles, curl the toes up. Research has found that you get more strength development in the exercise as a whole, more muscle activity in the calves and most likely more muscle growth as a result of that and there is no decrease in the muscle growth of the hamstrings. Many people, especially in bodybuilding circles, they have this idea that if you involve another muscle group that you isolate the target musculature less and therefore it grows less. And that’s not true. Multiple studies have shown that that is simply not true. So essentially you can get free volume for the calves by curling the toes up, this lengthens the gastrocnemius, which is a meaty part of the calves over here and allows them to reach higher levels of muscle activity, produce more force, and therefore the body will recruit them more and they will grow more during the exercise without any cost for the hamstrings. So you do a movement like this. This is quite intuitive. Most people do this intuitively pretty well.
Now if for some reason, you can deload the weight, if for some reason you don’t want to grow your calves, which some people have the the luxury problem that their calves are too big, what you can do is point the toes forward and this essentially shuts off the gastrocnemius because they are too short, they’re too bundled up and you can even go into full active insufficiency, which means that the gastrocnemius muscle of the calves, so this part is too bunched up, the axon myosin cross bridges are too bunched up to form effective cross bridges. The muscle in that case cannot effectively contribute to the movement, and you’ll feel that, and you get kind of a cramping sensation in the calves. You might interpret that feeling as if the calves are working harder, but in fact they are working less hard, they are producing a lot less tension and it’s tension that drives muscle growth. So if you want to isolate the hamstrings and not train your calves, point the toes forward. If you want free calf gains, then dorsiflex the ankles during your leg curls.
The same tip to dorsiflex your ankles applies during lying leg curls. When you perform your movement you want to curl the toes up towards the body and perform the movement. This way you don’t want to point the calves away, so this is plantar flexion, this is what you do if you want to isolate the hamstrings, but it does not improve muscle growth in hamstrings, it just reduces growth in the gastrocnemius, this part of the calves. Another thing that you can do for your lying leg curls is to increase range of motion by using a foam pad. Most leg curl machines, they don’t allow you to get a great range of motion in the bottom position here, you can see that the weights are touching each other, there’s no tension on the hamstrings in the most lengthened position. Now, if you want to improve that, what you can do is use a foam pads or some… and anything goes, you could use even your jacket or something, as long as it’s thick enough and it’s stable and safe and everything, anything that you could put there can increase the range of motion. So now, you can barely see it, but in this position the weights are just not touching each other, which means that there is high tension in the hamstrings. When you’re doing the exercise yourself it’s very easy to feel this and then you can do the exercise and get tension throughout the full range of motion.
And then the final tip for your quad training is to do what I call stripper squats, but I cannot call them that right now because this is my girlfriend. So we’re going to call them toe squats. You can demonstrate them. Toe squats are basically a modified version, a more practical version of sissy squats. You are on your toes and you squat all the way down. The nice part about this exercise is that even if your ankle mobility is not great, you can get full range of motion. You can see she goes completely ass to grass. So you also typically want to not go all the way up, so you go up, until about here, a little bit further, a little bit further and stop, go down. When you do it this way, you’ll be surprised how difficult the exercise is because you’re getting constant muscle tension. You’re going to get an insane pump in your quads, and you’ll also be surprised how difficult the exercise is, even with bodyweight. Still, it’s not an advanced exercise, so I like to do this at the end of a workout, kind of as a finisher and then with bodyweight, for high repetitions, constant muscle tension. You can also use blood flow restriction if you’re really masochistic. Really hammers the quads. Doing them this way also gets rid of the problem that some people, especially when they’re not used to doing full range of motion training for the quads and really closing that knee angle, they’re not doing ass to grass squats, it can be a bit hard on the knees. So if you’re doing them at the end of a workout when you’re already fatigued and you also do them for very high repetitions, just body weight, then the stress on knees isn’t nearly as bad and you can get an amazing stimulus for your quads in a very practical manner. And the nice thing is that you can do this exercise anywhere. So give these a try, let me know what you think and if you like this type of content, I’d be honored if you like and subscribe.
