Posted on August 14, 2018 by Kate Halsall

They’re often a neglected body part, mainly because training them is hard and sweaty work. But if you’re after a great looking, strong and athletic body, then leg training should be a weekly staple. To help you with that, here’s one of my personal favourite leg workouts, and it’s ridiculously effective for building strength and muscle in your legs.

The back squats and deadlifts give you your strength stimulus; whilst the lunges and heel bridges give you plenty of hypertrophy work to pack on muscle size. Another positive of the leg workout is that it’s perfectly balanced. There’s a good mixture of quad dominant exercises and hamstring dominant exercises; as well as unilateral (one sided) exercises to keep your body perfectly in proportion and injury free.

Including a 10 minute dynamic warmup and a 5 minute stretching session at the end, the whole workout should take 1 hour and 15 minutes.

The Leg Workout

  1. Back Squats. 3 sets of 5 reps. As heavy as you can manage without sacrificing form. Give yourself at least 3 minutes between each set
  2. Deadlifts. Build up to 1 heavy set of 5 reps. Personally I like to take about 4 sets increasing in weight to warm up, then go for my big heavy set as number 5.
  3. Lunges. 5 sets of 8-12 reps. Keep your rests to 60 seconds for a real quad pump.
  4. Single leg elevated heel bridges. 4 sets of 10 each side. Keep your rests to 60 seconds between sets and thank me later.

It’s important that you stick to the timings provided in order for the exercises to have their intended results. don’t go rushing your strength work and don’t give yourself extra rest of your hypertrophy exercises. Stick to the plan and reap the rewards.