Leg training...looking to break out!

[yellowballs]

40 yrs old 5'11" at 200 lbs.

current training is Push/Pull/Legs with abs and calves 3 times a week. A little cardio in between.

My wheels are lacking especially my calves. I see some slow progress in my quads, even slower progress in my hamstrings and glutes, but man are my calves lookin sad.

I want to spend the next 6 months to try to get my legs bigger. I am almost convinced that I should actually do legs more during the week but so many people say that you can't recover well and will actually lose size by overtraining.

But I have been squatting , leg press, extension,curls,lunges, high reps, 5 x 5, 10 x 10, singles, pause reps etc.
I usually give any program at least 12 weeks before I try something else.

I am willing on doing a program that focuses on leg growth even if that means not doing as much for upper body.

Any advice?

 

[lachrymist]

That's broscience just hit them more that over training is just bullshit.

 

[Southernfish]

That's broscience just hit them more that over training is just bullshit.

Overtraining is NOT bullshit whatsoever. Overtraning is very real and the reason a shit load of people don't grow.

To the OP, what I find with legs is its not so much the weight being pushed, or pulled in the case of the hamstings that contributes to muscle growth, but the form, the contraction and how the rep is performed. Remember when youre focusing on quads, push through your heels not the balls of your feet. And when youre working hamstring focus of feeling the muscle work, don't just lift weight. The hamstrings need only a short movment like an ab crunch to work. Picture when you pull, your calves meeting up with your hams, do not pull from you ankles but rather you calves and back of your knee, and don't extend too far on the negative as the tension will be taken off your hams and put on your knees. Also try a 2-3sec negative and then explode with all you have on the positive and squeeze at the top, don't just go up down up down up down and use a weight where you only need a 1min rest between sets. Feel the muscle working, and make those legs burn, if your legs aren't burning and your aren't in pain theyre not going to grow.

 

[Mrrippedzilla]

Excellent response by Schredder, overtraining is certainly not broscience.
There is clear evidence showing that training a particular bodypart too much leads to more time need for recovery and CNS damage (not quite the word I'm looking for but you get my point). Based on this, I wouldn't recommend training legs more than 1-2x per week depending on your ability to recover & how much volume you use.

I just want to add something regarding calves - this is the one body part that is very hit and miss. I know some people with naturally thick calves & others who, no matter how good their training is, have skinny calves. I believe this is the one muscle that relies alot more on genetics than others, so don't be too discouraged if your calves aren't that big

 

[yellowballs]

Excellent response by Schredder, overtraining is certainly not broscience.
There is clear evidence showing that training a particular bodypart too much leads to more time need for recovery and CNS damage (not quite the word I'm looking for but you get my point). Based on this, I wouldn't recommend training legs more than 1-2x per week depending on your ability to recover & how much volume you use.

I just want to add something regarding calves - this is the one body part that is very hit and miss. I know some people with naturally thick calves & others who, no matter how good their training is, have skinny calves. I believe this is the one muscle that relies alot more on genetics than others, so don't be too discouraged if your calves aren't that big

Yeah I think I am one of those types. I wont give up on em tho!

Schredder, my primary leg work is done through squats,leg press,dumbell split squats. On back day I have been using a traps bar to dead lift with, I get a good hit on my legs when I do. Do you think doing traps bar dead lift and then squats 2 or 3 days later may be too much for proper recovery?

 

[tbonexl]

Legs are just a real bitch to hit. You'll know u hit em good when u gotta crawl out the gym. Might even puke once or twice. Those types of leg workouts can only be done once a week.

 

[Southernfish]

Excellent response by Schredder, overtraining is certainly not broscience.
There is clear evidence showing that training a particular bodypart too much leads to more time need for recovery and CNS damage (not quite the word I'm looking for but you get my point). Based on this, I wouldn't recommend training legs more than 1-2x per week depending on your ability to recover & how much volume you use.

I just want to add something regarding calves - this is the one body part that is very hit and miss. I know some people with naturally thick calves & others who, no matter how good their training is, have skinny calves. I believe this is the one muscle that relies alot more on genetics than others, so don't be too discouraged if your calves aren't that big

Good call on the calves, this is a tricky muscle group for sure. I am not genetically gifted with calves but what I have found to work quite well in bringing them up is heavy heavy weight once or twice per week max. When your doing the rep, theres basically two stages to the rep, almost like notches, so slow negative as always, and pop it up to the first stage hold it for a second then sqeeze it all the way to the top and sqeeze those suckers hard for 2 seconds and repeat that for whatever amount of reps your shooting for. Make them burn.

 

[Southernfish]

Yeah I think I am one of those types. I wont give up on em tho!

Schredder, my primary leg work is done through squats,leg press,dumbell split squats. On back day I have been using a traps bar to dead lift with, I get a good hit on my legs when I do. Do you think doing traps bar dead lift and then squats 2 or 3 days later may be too much for proper recovery?

No I don't think would be too much, but what I see is a lack of hamstring exercises brother, even though the squat and leg press hit your hams you want one or two exercises to be done to hit them directly. These could be done on legs day or back day right after your deadlifts.

 

[yellowballs]

No I don't think would be too much, but what I see is a lack of hamstring exercises brother, even though the squat and leg press hit your hams you want one or two exercises to be done to hit them directly. These could be done on legs day or back day right after your deadlifts.

I know exactly what you are talkin about with the "notches", but I think Im not holding it at the top like you said, I gotta start doing that.

I workout in different places depending on my schedual. I train at home, its basic, I have a power rack for squats and I can DL. I dont have any machines. So for hams I do SLDL (but I tend to go light) and Nordics (hook your feet under bar and lower yourself while on your knees).
Sometimes I train at the the gym where I have access to machines... leg press, ext & curl. It just varys when I am at this gym but I am not hitting leg curls every workout.

 

[Southernfish]

I know exactly what you are talkin about with the "notches", but I think Im not holding it at the top like you said, I gotta start doing that.

I workout in different places depending on my schedual. I train at home, its basic, I have a power rack for squats and I can DL. I dont have any machines. So for hams I do SLDL (but I tend to go light) and Nordics (hook your feet under bar and lower yourself while on your knees).
Sometimes I train at the the gym where I have access to machines... leg press, ext & curl. It just varys when I am at this gym but I am not hitting leg curls every workout.

Gotta squeeze them man, hard, start out with a light squeeze though on the first one or two sets though or youll end up locking them up something fierce, and its quite painful.
Ok SLDL are awesome, why don't your try going a lil heavier and getting a bit more tension on them. Don't go too low on that exercise either, you only need to bring the bar just below you knees before you bring it up again, stretching the muscle too far can cause little tears, and not the kind we are after.

 

[yellowballs]

Gotta squeeze them man, hard, start out with a light squeeze though on the first one or two sets though or youll end up locking them up something fierce, and its quite painful.
Ok SLDL are awesome, why don't your try going a lil heavier and getting a bit more tension on them. Don't go too low on that exercise either, you only need to bring the bar just below you knees before you bring it up again, stretching the muscle too far can cause little tears, and not the kind we are after.

Yeah that why I go light cause Im stretching far.... alright I will go just below the knees.
Its all about Technique . Thanks bro!

How do you feel bout pause squats?

 

[yellowballs]

Gotta squeeze them man, hard, start out with a light squeeze though on the first one or two sets though or youll end up locking them up something fierce, and its quite painful.
Ok SLDL are awesome, why don't your try going a lil heavier and getting a bit more tension on them. Don't go too low on that exercise either, you only need to bring the bar just below you knees before you bring it up again, stretching the muscle too far can cause little tears, and not the kind we are after.

Yeah that why I go light cause Im stretching far.... alright I will go just below the knees.
Its all about Technique . Thanks bro!

How do you feel bout pause squats?

 

[casperthefriendly]

You also want to come to a complete stop at the bottom of the range of motion when working calves. When you're at the bottom, your achilles is under extreme tension. If you bounce the weight instead of coming to a stop and then starting again, the tension in your tendon is helping to spring the weight back up, which drastically reduces the amount of work your muscles have to do to move the weight.

 

[Southernfish]

Yeah that why I go light cause Im stretching far.... alright I will go just below the knees.
Its all about Technique . Thanks bro!

How do you feel bout pause squats?

I don't think that they are something you are going to want to do every time you squat but it can definetly be something to incorporate into your routine. I use pause reps on a number of different lifts. I don't do them on every rep though, only on the last two three reps so the muscle has a bit more time under tension. The only thing that would make me worry is if you are using a decent amount of weight, that pause is going to cause an awful lot of tension on your knees which can turn into an issue over time.

 

[carverelli]

I'm a huge fan of front squats for the quads, and walking lungs for the hams and glutes. When walking lunges, smaller steps emphasize the quads and larger strides work the glutes/ hamstring the in. Good cardio too.

For front squats once you get up towards 225 you may want to invest in an apparatus that transfers the weight to the traps and off the from shoulders directly. I fabricated this one. May be a little crude but works very well

 

[lachrymist]

Overtraining is NOT bullshit whatsoever. Overtraning is very real and the reason a shit load of people don't grow.

To the OP, what I find with legs is its not so much the weight being pushed, or pulled in the case of the hamstings that contributes to muscle growth, but the form, the contraction and how the rep is performed. Remember when youre focusing on quads, push through your heels not the balls of your feet. And when youre working hamstring focus of feeling the muscle work, don't just lift weight. The hamstrings need only a short movment like an ab crunch to work. Picture when you pull, your calves meeting up with your hams, do not pull from you ankles but rather you calves and back of your knee, and don't extend too far on the negative as the tension will be taken off your hams and put on your knees. Also try a 2-3sec negative and then explode with all you have on the positive and squeeze at the top, don't just go up down up down up down and use a weight where you only need a 1min rest between sets. Feel the muscle working, and make those legs burn, if your legs aren't burning and your aren't in pain theyre not going to grow.

Hitting a muscle group 3 times a week that is lagging to bring it up isn't going into Over training. Show me a scientific study that proves otherwise.

 

[carverelli]

Hitting a muscle group 3 times a week that is lagging to bring it up isn't going into Over training. Show me a scientific study that proves otherwise.

If your on gear, you recover much faster than you would otherwise. But aas won't help you rest. IMO that's were the rub comes. After hitting it hard and fast long enough the cns gets overloaded and rest is the cure. Broscience? Maybe, again your mmv.

 

[Mrrippedzilla]

Hitting a muscle group 3 times a week that is lagging to bring it up isn't going into Over training. Show me a scientific study that proves otherwise.

I think you forget that overtraining depends on volume/intensity/frequency of your programme and varies from person to person. The OP is 40yrs old and includes 10x10 routines plus a push/pull for 2 days, so it can lead to overtraining over the long term. I also think your question's the wrong way round; it should be - show me a study showing increased muscle mass with increased training frequency?

Overtraining

To address the issue of whether overtraining exists: it does but there isn't a fixed definition for it, which is what leads to all the confusion.
There are studies showing that overtraining leads to less strength due to reduced testosterone, increases cortisol and leads to more inflammation (Xiao W, Chen P, et al. Effects of overtraining on skeletal muscle growth and gene expression. Int J Sports Med, 2012;33(10): p. 846-53). There is also the issue of increased glycogen depletion due to more workouts, which can also have an impact on muscle growth.

I also mentioned that overtraining can hurt your CNS system, which in turn will damage your ability to lift heavy. Another study (?2-Adrenergic receptor downregulation and performance decrements during high-intensity resistance exercise overtraining) compared a group training 2x week with one training everyday with high intensity. The group suffered a decrease in overall strength and it took the them between 2-8 weeks to recover!! It also showed that the B2 receptors were severely down regulated (anyone who's been on a preworkout/clen too long knows what this means) and this correlated with the long recovery time.

These articles show that overtraining will lead to a lack of recovery time, which long term can hurt your gains and possibly lead to muscle atrophy (if you're off cycle). They also illustrate that it's not the intensity (weight on the bar) that causes overtraining but more the volume (number of reps) and frequency (days per week) of lifting (Fry, A. C., & Kraemer, W. J. (1997). Resistance exercise overtraining and overreaching. Sports Medicine, 23(2), 106-129).

PED Influence

I do want to mention that the impact of overtraining on someone on cycle is significantly less. A study (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12067856) actually showed guys on 600mg/week of test gaining 18 pounds of lean muscle mass in 20 weeks WITHOUT ANY TRAINING.
In another study (The effects of supraphysiologic doses of testos... [N Engl J Med. 1996] - PubMed - NCBI) subjects were given either steroids alone, training alone or steroids plus training. The steroids group gained a similar amount to the training group and the steroids plus training grouped gained essentially what both groups combined gained. These studies show that gear makes training much less relevant.

Ideal training for muscle hypertrophy

Since I've addressed that overtraining clearly does exist and that AAS will make your training programme much less relevant, the question remains: why shouldn't you train legs 3x week to build them?

A review paper on the subject (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17326698) showed that moderate volume (30-60 reps per muscle group) is best for hypertrophy. Now this can be a typical 5x5 2x a week, or 3x10, 2x15, etc. Notice that I said PER MUSCLE GROUP not PER WORKOUT.

As for the frequency of the workout, studies show that anywhere from hitting a muscle group once every 5th day to 2x a week is optimal for hypertrophy (Applications of the dose-response for mu... [J Strength Cond Res. 2005] - PubMed - NCBI). I personally recommend less frequency for those using very heavy loads or who have poor recovery ability (higher age group).

So for muscle hypertrophy you should stay between 30-60 reps per muscle group for volume and frequency per muscle should be no more than 2x a week - the rest of the details I'll leave to the OP. To your idea of "training legs 3x per week isn't overtraining" - no it isn't but training legs 3x per week is NOT OPTIMAL FOR MUSCLE GROWTH, which is what the OP wants.

Summary

Most bros believe in the "more is better" approach (they also tend to believe that people with big biceps obviously train them every day...) but the science shows that less is more. If you train your legs within a 30-60 rep range over 1-2 workouts per week with a progressive overload (NOT failure), you will maximise muscle hypertrophy.
The studies also clearly show that overtraining does exist (denying it is pointless) but if you're on cycle it will have a much lower impact.
There you go, science showing that overtraining exists and that training legs 3x a week won't help them "catch up" as you say

 

[lachrymist]

If he was training to failure every single time, I would agree with you that there would be some CNS damage. I don't think he is though he is 40 yrs old prolly has some lifting experience. If you are training to keep a steady overload it is easy to fit in a muscle group 3x a week with plenty of rest.

 

[DreDay187]

Hitting a muscle group 3 times a week that is lagging to bring it up isn't going into Over training. Show me a scientific study that proves otherwise.

You made the claim there's no such thing as overtraining so the onus is on you to prove your claim. Overtraining is absolutely real. Just bc you haven't been able to create enough systemic fatigue or your training is lacking doesn't mean something doesn't exist.


RippedZilla: I believe Mark Rippetoe has a great working definition for overtraining, I'm paraphrasing but it's pretty close to:

"Overtraining is the condition when a lifter cannot recover from the stress of a workout in two reduced load training cycles".

Training is the stressor that disrupts homeostasis which begins the process of muscle breakdown and repair. Using Seyle's General Adaptation Syndrome as a reference this would be stage one or 'alarm'. This is where the stress of training has increased fatigue levels and performance has regressed.

The next step is the resistance/adaptation stage where recovery (partial or full) has taken place and an increase in performance or the ability to adapt to the previous stressor is noticed. This is where you differentiate overreaching from overtraining. Overreaching is a planned and logical method to induce stress and super compensate for it during recovery.

Stage 3 or exhaustion stage is the final stage. It's where the stressor is being applied too frequently or too strongly and recovery isn't sufficient to meet the stress of training, fatigue levels increase, performance levels decrease, hormone levels change, etc. Taken too far, death can be the final outcome in extreme cases.

Rippetoe defines trainees by their ability to recover from training stress. A beginner requires 24-48hrs (so daily linear progression is possible workout to workout), intermediates require greater stressors and more recovery so weekly progression can be maintained and advanced and elite athletes work on monthly progression or even longer.

So using his definitions, a beginner is hard to overtrain just bc their ability to recover is so great, stress needed to disrupt homeostasis is so little. But if not recovered after 2 days of reduced lifting he is overtrained. Similarly an intermediate would be overtrained if not recovered after 2wks of reduced load and advanced 2months or more.

Thought I'd share as i believe this to be one of the better explanations of overtraining.