Most beginner, and even some advanced bodybuilders tend to place tons of emphasis on their upper bodies, and not nearly enough stress on their lower bodies.
While it certainly is fun to train your pecs, delts, arms, and even upper back, you'll never develop your muscular body to the fullest without some hard leg training.
Here are the Top 5 Exercises for developing your quads and hamstrings for a better body.
1.
Squats Often referred to as "the king of all exercises," the squat is not only the best mass-builder for the legs, but the best all-around muscle building movement for the entire body.
It will build huge quads, hamstrings, and spinal erectors, and it will also strengthen the abs, upper back and rear delts.
It's one of the hardest, if not THE hardest exercise to perform, but don't skip out - you will be severely compromising your muscle-building potential if you do.
The best way to perform squats is with a medium-width stance and as low a bar position on your back as possible.
To initiate the movement, push your hips BACK, not down.
As you squat back, your knees will also bend, taking you down lower to the floor.
Once you reach the point where your hip crease is below your knee line (below parallel), drive your hips forward and your knees back to power yourself up to the starting position.
2.
Leg Presses While not nearly as good a leg builder as the squat, the leg press can be one of the best tools at your disposal for building big legs.
Like the squat, it allows you to hit your legs with the stimulation of very heavy weights.
However, unlike the squat, you do not have to worry about balancing or stabilizing the weight.
All you have to do is push.
To equally stimulate your quads and hamstrings, place your feet fairly high on the platform, but not so high that your toes are hanging off.
Put your feet at a medium width, or closer if your knees can handle it.
After you have disengaged the safety catch, lower the weight towards your body, and use a FULL RANGE OF MOTION.
There is no reason not to use as a full a range as possible with this machine.
3.
Dumbbell Split Squats The split squat is not done very often, and it is very challenging, but I have actually found it to be one of the best quads exercises there are.
A split squat is a one-legged squat done with the free foot resting elevated on a bench behind you.
This keeps the movement very strict and focused.
To do the movement with dumbbells, place the weights on your sides, get into position, squat down, and grab.
Continue the movement, but with dumbbells in hand.
You may need to start light to get your balance, but don't underestimate your strength on this movement - most people can use very heavy dumbbells for sets of 8-10 reps without much problem.
4.
Stiff-Leg Deadlifts While the squat does hit the whole leg very hard, it is usually not enough for most people to fully develop their hamstrings.
The best movement for that muscle group is the stiff-leg deadlift.
It is a deadlift done with straight or nearly-straight legs, and with the bar kept from hitting the floor for the entire set.
To do stiff-leg deadlifts, stand on a stack of plates or a narrow platform, so that the bar can sink as low as your foot line without the plates hitting the floor.
Do a normal deadlift to get the weight up to standing position, and proceed to bend over only at the waist.
Once you feel a good stretch in your hamstrings, drive your hips forward to get back to the starting position.
5.
Seated Calf Raises Last but not least, you must work your calves, and work them hard, to get the best pair of muscular legs possible.
There are many fancy calf exercises that you might see people doing in the gym, but the plain old seated calf machine is probably the best mass builder for this muscle group.
It allows you to use very heavy weights (a must for calves), and it puts a great deal of stress on the outer calf.
To best perform seated calf raises for big calves, place the front half of your foot on the bar / pad.
Once you have warmed up, load the machine with enough weight so that you can only do 5-6 reps before failing.
Do several sets at this weight.
This may seem counterintuitive to what you have learned about sets and reps for muscle-building, but calves are a bit different.
You walk around on them all day with your bodyweight, and they need a large volume of heavy stimulation to grow any more than they already have.