There’s nothing worse than having a massive upper body with thin legs. The proportion doesn’t match; that’s why we’re here to help you to get big legs.
Having strong legs doesn’t just make us better at the gym or sports. But it also helps us in our daily activities like walking, climbing stairs, and carrying heavy things. Most guys only focus on building a big bicep workout routine they ignore the other essential parts of the body.
Here, we will discuss some of the most effective exercises you can do to get huge legs and achieve your fitness goals. No matter if you’re a seasoned athlete or just starting out, these exercises to build big legs will help you get the results you want. So let’s start!
Why Is Leg Muscle Workout Important?
Our legs are like the foundation of our body. They allow us to use our strength, speed, and power effectively. Training your legs is not like eating cupcakes. Leg day can be one of the most challenging workouts of the week, requiring hard work and determination to overcome mental challenges and make progress.
Working out your leg muscles helps people to grow and produces important hormones like cortisol, testosterone, and human growth hormone. These hormones are beneficial for your overall muscle development, including your chest physique.
Your legs consist of large muscle groups such as the hamstrings, quadriceps, glutes, and calves. By training these muscles, you can burn calories, boost your metabolism, and build lean muscle. Give a chance to chest day to say thanks to you!
Additionally, training your legs can better your coordination, balance, and flexibility, which lowers the risk of injury. It might be a good idea to start taking leg day more seriously.
Effective Exercises for Building Bigger Legs
If you’re looking to build bigger and stronger legs, here are 10 great leg exercises that can help you develop huge muscles for any fitness level:
1. Walking Lunges
In terms of big legs workout, you can do walking lunges using various equipment like a barbell, dumbbells, kettlebells, sandbags, or just your body weight.
To build bigger legs with walking lunges, make sure to focus on two things: going through a full range of motion and maintaining control during the lunge. Taking shorter steps that allow your knees to go over your toes will give you a deeper knee bend, which targets your quadriceps more.
If you want to focus on loading your glutes (and a bit of your hamstrings), taking wider steps would be the way to go. Regardless of the step size, walking lunges are an excellent way to wrap up your leg workout and work multiple lower body muscles simultaneously.
2. Back Squats
Most people’s moods get off when they have to perform squats on leg day. But back squats are highly efficient to grow legs. High-bar back squats are particularly beneficial for targeting the quadriceps, as they allow for a more upright posture and deeper knee bending.
Compared to the low bar back squat, the high bar back squat is the better option if your goal is to develop larger quadriceps. To maximize quad muscle growth, you can also try variations like the tempo back squat, which involves controlling the speed of your squat movement.
3. Deadlifts
As you can’t beat the classics! Not only do they help you build big legs, but they also strengthen the muscles in your backside, improving your posture and potentially making you taller.
To do this exercise, you’ve to start by standing with your feet slightly, keeping distance from your shoulders. Rember, the barbell must be on the floor in front of you.
Next, bend your knees and hips to reach down and grab the bar with your hands. Use an overhand grip, making sure your hands are shoulder-width apart.
4. Front Squats
The front squat is a type of squat that allows for more bending of the knees (deeper knee flexion), which means your quadriceps are engaged even more.
By doing the front squat, like the high bar back squat, you put less strain on your hamstrings, glutes, and lower back. Instead, it focuses more on the quadriceps, making them work harder and promoting muscle growth. You can perform the front squat with a full grip or by crossing your arms to get big legs.
5. Barbell Step Up
While squats and deadlifts are great for working multiple strengths at once, focusing on preventing imbalances in your workout is crucial. One way to do this is by incorporating uni-lateral exercises that target one leg at a time. This helps ensure that both legs receive equal attention and strength. Simply perform more repetitions on the side that needs to catch up, and soon both legs will be strong and working together successfully.
6. Bulgarian Split Squats
If you want to shift focus from the lower chest cable workout, you can perform the Bulgarian split squat using different equipment, and the weight can be adjusted based on your goals. You can use heavier weights for more strength-building or lighter weights for endurance.
To make the exercise more challenging and increase muscle engagement, you can elevate the lead leg on a raised surface, allowing it further to increase the range of motion and muscle damage.
7. Machine Hamstring Curls
Regarding the workout for big legs, using machines for hamstring curls (lying down or sitting) is a perfect way to work your hamstrings more without putting strain on your lower back or hips.
You can do these exercises at the beginning of your workout to pre-exhaust your hamstrings before doing other exercises, or you can do them towards the end of your session.
8. Incline Treadmill Sprint
If you aim to achieve single-digit body fat, treadmill sprint exercise can help you get there. When you put in maximum effort during this exercise, it creates a phenomenon called EPOC (Excess Post-exercise Oxygen Consumption). As a result, it causes your body to experience an “oxygen debt,” which boosts your metabolism. In simpler terms, it helps you tap into your stored fat and release energy, reducing belly fat.
9. Standing Long Jump
If you strictly hard work to get the bigger legs workout, go with standing long jumping! This exercise might remind you of something you did in primary school, but it’s actually a decisive move that targets many of the big muscles in your legs. By this, your explosive strength will improve, and it is an effective exercise for building your lower body.
10. Machine Leg Extensions
Using a machine for leg extensions is a good approach to working your quadriceps more without putting strain on your back or hips. It’s totally up to you whether to do it at the beginning of your workout to tire out your quadriceps before doing other exercises or in the last when you finish all sessions.
How Often Should You Train Legs per Week?
For leg muscle workout, the general rule of thumb is to do 2 to 3-time leg workouts in a week. Why? Because this gives your muscles enough time to rest and recover, which is vital for growth.
Muscles usually need about 48 hours to recover, so avoiding working the same muscle groups on consecutive days is best. This way, you allow for proper rest, recovery, and muscle growth.
Before deciding on your workout schedule, you must clarify and write down the target that you want to achieve. If you want to prioritize your lower body or if it’s an area you want to improve, consider adding an extra leg session each week. Additionally, if you have different priorities, you can adjust accordingly.
Another option is to divide your leg workouts into separate days, focusing on different muscle groups like hamstrings, quadriceps, glutes, and calves. This approach allows you to concentrate on specific muscles and get the most out of your bigger legs workout.
Look at the 5-day Split With Legs As a Priority
Monday – Legs Push, concentrating on squads & calves
Tuesday – Upper Push, focus on the chest, shoulders, and triceps
Wednesday – Legs Pull focusing on the calves, hamstrings, and glutes
Thursday – Rest
Friday – Upper Pull, focus on back and biceps
Saturday – Legs: concentrate on extensive compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, and accessory motions
Sunday – Day Off
Essential Tips on How to Get Bigger Legs?
By following these leg training techniques and workout plans, you can build strong and muscular legs that will make you feel confident wearing shorts during warm weather and throughout the year. Make sure to keep in mind the below tips before starting to hard-working on bigger legs.
Warm Up Appropriately
Spending only 10-20 minutes on the treadmill, elliptical, or bike is not enough for a proper warm-up. It’s important to start your session with 5-10 minutes of active stretching (stretching while moving) followed by stabilization exercises. This will help prepare your body and prevent injuries during your workout.
Focus On Functional Exercises
It’s best to avoid heavy leg extensions and leg curls because our bodies aren’t naturally designed to flex and extend our knees while sitting down. Using heavy weights on these machine exercises can lead to problems like patellar tendonitis (inflammation of the knee tendon) and muscle imbalances. These issues can set you back for weeks to reach your goal of grow legs.
Don’t Forget Stabilizers
Many guys at the gym often overlook the smaller stabilizing muscles in the hips. These muscles are vital for preventing injuries and maintaining proper movement and stability of the hips and pelvis.
If these muscles aren’t working well, other exercises become less effective and potentially riskier. To address this, include exercises that target the abductors (outer thigh) and adductors (inner thigh) as part of your warm-up before squatting and deadlifting.
Use Isolation Movements
For building bigger legs, curl machines and leg extensions are helpful for targeting specific muscles in your legs. To achieve well-defined quads and hamstrings, use these machines with light to moderate resistance and perform high repetitions. Make sure to set up the machines correctly to prevent knee injuries.
Bottom Line
Hopefully, this guide help you understand how to get huge legs in a better way. Building bigger legs requires months of dedicated effort both in the gym and in your kitchen. Once you have your meal plan for gaining muscle sorted out, focus on maximizing leg growth with the workouts and exercises mentioned above.
Moreover, you can hire a personal trainer that thoroughly guides you about exercises and diet plans because it’s crucial to eat enough calories to support your training, recovery, and muscle growth. So, if you don’t serious about your legs working out before, it’s time to stay consistent with your exercises, and you will reach your goals over time.
Big Legs FAQs
- How can I get thicker legs?
You must follow the recommended workout for big legs, such as Walking lunges 3 sets x 20 steps, Squats 4 sets x 8 reps, Deadlifts 4 sets x 8 reps, Seated leg curls 2 sets x 20 reps, Unilateral Superset or Single leg step ups 3 sets x 12 reps.
- How many sets do you need to build big legs?
Whether working out at home or the gym, you want to make the most of your exercise. However, a recent study suggests that doing 18 sets of squats could be the most effective way to build leg muscles.
- How long does it take to build big legs?
The good news for you is you can start seeing a little bit of results in just two to four weeks of starting a leg workout. Although for significant changes, it typically takes three to four months, depending on your fitness level.
- What exercises build leg size?
You can quickly build the leg size if you do big legs workout like Leg presses, Lunges, Front squats, Calf raises, Leg curls, Bulgarian split squats, Romanian deadlifts, or Leg extensions.
Related: The Best Biggest Triceps Workout: 10 Must Do Exercises
