Skipped Leg Day Again? Here Are 4 Exercises To Make It Slightly Easier To Swallow

Leg day sucks. There’s no one that will ever say otherwise unless they’re full of shit and are trying to look tough. And if you have to miss a day at the gym any given week, why does it just happen to be when you were supposed to do legs?

But it doesn’t always have to be that way and while this workout may not give you thighs like Tom Platz, they will be respectable enough where you will look aesthetically pleasing. There’s nothing worse than being that guy with a huge upper body and pencil-thin legs. 

1. SQUATS (5 sets)

The granddaddy of exercises still needs to be done but you won’t have to spend hours in the rack wrapping and unwrapping your knees every set. If you perform at least four working sets and go up to a weight that is more than respectable, you’ll get a lot out of it and satisfy that ‘squats make your whole body stronger’ way of thinking.

The key here is to do full reps and not that halfway down crap many people try to get away with just so their max weight sounds high. So unless you can go just past the parallel mark, it’s not a rep.

Then when you get that down properly, your minimum reps should look something like this:

*Warm-up set: 12

*1st working set: 10

*2nd working set: 8

*3rd working set: 6

*4th working set: 4

If you can do more than the above-suggested minimum numbers, feel free to do so or add a little weight to what you’re doing.

 

2. LEG EXTENSIONS (5 sets)

These are great for isolating the quads and carving out some nice detail. Do these right (slow and strict) and that teardrop you’ve been seeking will reward you eventually. Start off with a warm-up set and do four-to-five working sets. But unlike squats, stick to higher reps with these and don’t go lower than 10 in your final set.

A compound movement for strength like the squat can be beneficial with more weight but leg extensions are better suited for reps and time under tension.

 

3. LEG CURLS (5 sets)

You can do either the lying or seated ones but the one added benefit of the seated variety is the design of the machine, which makes it easier to keep the hamstrings working throughout the entire set.

A big mistake people make when doing lying leg curls is to allow the pads to touch their hamstrings at the top of the rep. This causes the hamstring to get help in the form of the pad being braced against their body and this stops the all-important time under tension clock.

 

4. CALF RAISES (4 sets)

Don’t forget your calves! There are so many options here and you should switch off every leg workout by doing standing, seated, donkey raises and the various machines even the average gyms have. Most thigh machines an be used for calves by resting only your toes on the bottom board.

You should try to squeeze calves in at the end of your workout on another day and these small but strong muscles can be trained frequently.