I want bigger legs and I want your advice

[ari3l654]

@drdeck Same concept. I rode dirtbikes, basically in and out of a semi squat position for hours at a time. My quads were massive. I did zero weights at the time.

 

[slimcher]

@drdeck most volleyball players who have big quads to got the gym too and focus their routine on their legs. also, as you said, they spend a lot of time in a squat position. thats not practical for someone who trains legs two or three times a week for less than two hours

if op has time biking is probably his best way to grow them

 

[iminlovewithjudas]

@fish3rofm3n i know its a bodyweight sub-reddit but in my experience you need to lift weights to properly make your legs grow

 

[amenomegami7]

@iminlovewithjudas That's my experience too. It's like it's the one thing impossible to do on pure bodyweight.

 

[biblicism]

@amenomegami7 I’m taking a break from deadlifts and good mornings right now. And DL and Barbell squats have been what made my legs hella grow.

OP, single leg squats or pistol squats with a TRX rope or chair for stability. But a faster way would be a gym membership and a squat rack. Imho

 

[sarahelizabeth]

@amenomegami7 6 months of pandemic lockdown with no barbell access taught me the same thing. Even with serious bodyweight leg work, my leg strength went backwards.

It’s not that difficult to see why. An 80kg dude is capable of barbell squatting 180kg+ with a few years of serious weightlifting. Pretty difficult to replicate that with bodyweight alone.

 

[peter77t]

@iminlovewithjudas Do stronglifts 5x5 and become a t-rex

 

[iminlovewithjudas]

@peter77t I've even had growth/strength gains by waiting until I've plateaued on 5 sets X 5 reps then dropping a set to make it 4 sets of 5 reps, keep going until plateau, then drop to 3X5 then down to 2X5 then 1 set of 5 ! honest, 1 set of 5 actually allowed me to keep getting (natural) gains!

 

[allart]

@iminlovewithjudas Interesting, I've been doing this with deadlift but never tried it with other lifts

 

[iminlovewithjudas]

@allart For legs (and I only state this for legs) I actually found the classic 5 sets of 5 one of the most inefficient ways to increase my strength/size.

I prefer a strenght& conditioning style system of cycling the weight (and ergo reps) each week in a low/medium/high pattern. With 5 sets of 5 I ahd pretty much stalled and was putting just 10kg onto my 1RM after 10-12 weeks but with the S&C style my strength/size took off and I put another 70kg onto my deadlift 1RM (natural) in a year

 

[ajarntham]

@fish3rofm3n Lunges, sprints, jumps

 

[tahliailovelife]

@fish3rofm3n Bicycle. Upslope

 

[madbird]

@fish3rofm3n My leg routine consists of pistol Squats, reverse nordic curls, nordic curls and Calf raises and I'm doing pretty well with it. If pistols aren't (yet) possible start with box step ups and start your pistols with heels raises, stretch your hamstrings and improve ankle flexion. To get more out of reverse nordic curls and nordic curls maintain tension all the time so don't go up all the way.

 

[katiebunnygirl]

@madbird What do you use to keep your feet anchored during Nordic curls? Even my couch is too light and I wind up lifting it.

 

[madbird]

@katiebunnygirl That was my problem for me as well in the beginning. I have two solutions. The one I have at home is really simple. It's a simple loop made with a belt which I screwed into the wall. For traveling I have a short bar wrapped with an old fitness mat and the middle of this bar is strapped to another bar which serves as an anchor for beneath a door. I try to find a picture because my technical English is kind of shit.

Edit: Here is the second solution I mentioned. The anchor (obviously) is on the other side of the door. And that's the very crude first one.

 

[katiebunnygirl]

@madbird Clever! Thanks!

 

[blade_302]

@fish3rofm3n Hill sprints

 

[dawn16]

@blade_302 hill sprints on a fixed gear bicycle

 

[oliver19]

@blade_302 Hill sprints work muscular endurance, work capacity, and anaerobic power. The hypertrophic stimulus is going to be very small unless you're starting from an untrained baseline. You need to get close to muscular failure to stimulate hypertrophy, and the form of failure involved in hill sprints is due to lactate buildup and muscular exhaustion. Those are very different things to the form of muscular failure needed to drive a hypertrophic stimulus.

Almost any lower body exercise with an external load will get you closer to muscular failure and thus be more effective for building leg muscle than hill sprints.

I'm a runner and thus do a fair amount of sprint work, including hill sprints. Yet, my quads are visibly smaller now than they used to be when I was getting in the gym on a more regular basis and doing proper externally loaded compound movements to get close to failure. Bodyweight and banded exercises were enough to maintain most of my muscle mass during COVID lockdowns, but the easiest way to build is with weights, and hill sprints probably aren't enough for anyone who's an intermediate trainee like myself to even maintain lower body muscle mass, and certainly isn't enough to build muscle mass.

Sprinting simply doesn't build muscle mass (unless, again, you're starting from an untrained baseline). Elite sprinters themselves spend a LOT of time in the gym. They sprint to get better at sprinting, and lift heavy to build muscle mass and strength. Even distance runners only sprint to develop better form and anaerobic power, not for the miniscule hypertrophic stimulus. Have you seen the legs on most distance runners? Many of them do more and harder hill sprints than you or I could even fathom, yet they look like that.

 

[blade_302]

@oliver19 Yes lots of running tends to breakdown muscle instead of build them. He also wants to beef up his legs without gym equipment. Hill sprints, regular sprints, stair sprints are fairly anaerobic, hills add a component of resistance especially depending on the incline, so there is no reason to think it wouldnt increase the size of his legs. Thanks for writing up your experience though. Good to have a runners perspective