Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.

Breaking out the muscle markers, yet again, to continue the perfect workout series.

This time, hitting the legs.

Guys, as always in our perfect workout series, what we’re trying to do is construct a workout

that is damned close to perfect as possible.

Realizing that there are a lot of ways to skin a cat.

But if we can choose one way, what would we do, and why would we do it?

That’s what’s most important here.

Why are we selecting what we’re selecting?

To do that we always start with the anatomy because we want to understand the function

of the muscles we’re trying to train.

When we look at the quadriceps, we know that because of the name ‘quadriceps’ it’s

got four components here.

It’s got a medial component on the inside of the knee called the vastus medialis.

We have a lateral component on the outside of the knee called the vastus lateralis.

Go figure, we have one in the middle of the knee that’s not seen here because under

the muscle that is seen is called the vastus intermedius.

The one that is seen here is called the rectus femoris and unlike the other three components

of the quads, this one does have an attachment above the hip, allowing us to have some function

on the hip, in terms of its ability to lift you into flexion.

It’s a weak flexor at that, but at least it has something unique about it that we want

to make sure we consider.

The other three muscles, however, are able to, and are really good at extending the knee.

That is their main focus.

They start in the femur, they end across the knee joint, and they are able to extend that

knee.

Now, whether that means we’re sitting down doing a leg extension – I don’t like when

you do leg extensions – or you have your feet in a closed chain environment with your

feet in contact with the ground like a squat – I like squats – that will give you the

same opportunity to extend your knee.

We want to make sure we’re training that.

On the other side we have our hamstrings.

We know with the hamstrings there are different components to this as well.

We have something that’s a little more medial.

We have something that’s a more lateral.

The biceps femoris on the outside, the semitendinosus on the inside, and then we have even more

on the inside of the semimembranosus.

A lot of different names, guys, but we have reasons for wanting to approach them in a

strategic way.

We’re going to do that for you in this workout.

Then, of course, you can’t always focus on just the sagittal plane.

I know we like to walk and move in this direction, but we can’t ignore the other planes of

motion.

Mainly, the frontal plane and the transverse plane.

We want to make sure we’re including exercises to do that.

Squats alone, no matter how great they are, they won’t train your hips in that way.

So, we’re going to do exercises to make sure we’re hitting the hips, the glutes,

the hamstrings, and the quads.

By the way, guys, there will be no muscle markers for the glutes.

I know Jesse volunteered.

He's been in these videos naked before.

It ain’t going to happen, guys.

Use your imagination.

I’m going to show you why and how it is so critical that you get the glutes and hamstrings

to function together if you want the perfect leg workout.

With that, let’s get started.

Breaking it all down, one by one.

So, with all of our perfect workouts we kick this thing off with a good, compound exercise.

The best, when it comes to training the legs.

That is the squat.

What we do here with the squat is work our way up in a warmup fashion.

In the warmups I never want you to exhaust yourselves in warming up.

To do that, what I recommend is working your way up through some submaximal sets.

If you can do half of what your working weight is going to be, then use about 20% less than

what you’re working weight is going to be.

Just do a few reps with each weight.

Enough to – we call it ‘grease the groove’.

To prepare yourself for the working sets.

What I like to do individually when it comes to the squat is something we call a ‘touchup

set’.

With a touchup set we’re trying to overreach with 10% of what we’re going to do in our

first working set, to our five-rep max.

What we do is a box squat.

The box squat will allow us to get down there, to feel the safety, to have the confidence

that we have a bottom point.

It will give us that biofeedback to know ‘that’s what I’m heading for’.

Give it a one or two rep touch, come back up, then start your working sets.

What does that do, neurologically?

That overreach allows us to feel more ready and able to attack our working sets with a

lighter we fight.

This, what would normally be our heavier weight, has now become lighter by the performance

of that one set.

Neurologically, it’s a powerful tool.

So now I go in a 5-5-10-25 format.

We’re starting with our heavier sets here and what we do is work ourselves up to a 10

rep, and then a ball-busting 25 rep max because it's important.

Training your legs to higher reps is something you’re always going to want to do if, for

nothing else, to train your mental fortitude.

But we want to get our heavy training in as well.

So, I like to scale it up in this way.

In between sets, one of the best things we can do, as I’ve covered in our perfect back

workout, is have some compression going on because of the loading of the squat.

We can get a decompression component by hanging from the bar in between sets for about 30

seconds.

You’re going to rest about three minutes between these work sets, and then you move

onto the next component here.

Now we’re going to hit the posterior chain.

We have two options here.

Number one: the barbell hip thrust.

Again, a compound movement to hit the glutes and hamstrings in one, powerful movement.

What this exercise does is allows us to load up pretty heavy.

In comparison to what your option is, that is the glute-ham raise.

I know not a lot of us have the glute-ham raise machine which takes it off the table

right off the bat.

But if you do have it, I’m going to explain why it provides some additional benefits.

Although, it’s at the expense of your ability to load it with a lot of weight like you can

a barbell hip thrust.

What we do is, first and foremost, if you choose a barbell hip thrust your rep sequencing

here is 25-10-5-5.

We’re working backward.

Why are we doing that?

25 reps, when it comes to this movement pattern, the most important thing you can do when you’re

training your posterior chain is initiate with your glutes.

Get your glutes to be the main driver of the movement.

Then allow the hamstrings to assist.

A lot of us do not have good control over our glutes.

We have to face facts.

So, what we do is take the lighter weight to start and really try to establish that

mind-muscle connection.

Try to establish that purposeful movement, initiating with the glutes, and then squeezing

with the hamstrings.

We can do that with a lighter weight that allows us to get into the movement pattern.

Then as we get more comfortable here, we get locked in.

Then we want to start adding weight.

That’s why we start high and go low, as opposed to the other side with the squats.

Now, if you were to choose the glute-ham raise as your alternative you would still use the

same rep scheme, but you’d have to load yourself appropriately to do that.

To do that you might have to use an assisted version, using your hands to creep yourself

up during the first portion of this exercise.

Or as you got into the heavier ranges you might want to include some weight held across

your chest to allow you to fail in these heavier ranges.

But what is the difference here?

The difference is that we’re getting active knee flexion here in the glute-ham raise that

we’re not getting in the barbell hip thrust.

There’s a lot more of an isometric component to the knee flexion of the hamstrings in the

barbell hip thrust.

So, you’re going to feel this more directly in your hamstrings when you do this exercise.

However, you will also feel this in your glutes if you do it right.

That’s the driver out of this flexed position.

It’s the initiation of the move back to the top by squeezing your cheeks together

as hard as possible.

And there’s a possibility you might not even need to load this exercise as natural

fatigue starts to drop your reps considerably as you go from your first set to your last.

But I will say this: because of the fact that you’re never going to be able to load as

much as you can with a barbell hip thrust, particularly through hip extension, if your

main goal is training for strength, I would opt toward the barbell hip thrust over this

alternative.

But never overlook the value of this exercise as it’s one of my favorites, especially

for athletes.

Moving on, one of the things I preach all the time as a trainer to athletes is the value

of single leg training.

You get an additional benefit, especially for athleticism and training single leg that

we want to make sure we don’t overlook.

It incorporates more hip stability in that frontal plane.

As I’ve said, most people overlook that valuable element, opting for all bilateral

training.

This is one of the things you get from it.

So, we do a dumbbell Bulgarian split squat in a high-low fashion.

What does that mean?

It means we can load this more through our quads, or we can load it more through our

glutes and posterior chain, depending upon the angle of our torso on each repetition.

So, if I were to drop straight down, I know that I’ve effectively loaded the quads predominantly

on this exercise.

Initiating the liftoff from the bottom of this exercise through the quads providing

most of the overload there.

But if come back up and then the next rep, I go down into what we call a sprinter lunge