LEGS and CALVES
I cannot stress enough the importance of working out your
legs....hard! It's a painful bodypart to workout, it's very aerobic, and if
any one exercise is going to make you feel lightheaded or nauseated..it's going to be
related to the legs. Why work out the legs you say? They get hidden by pants
anyway (you know these guys at the gym, with these massive upper bodies in tanktops,
coupled with baggy sweat pants despite the 100 degree temp indoors) Truth
is..nothing causes your body to pack on muscle mass as fast as working out your
legs. It is such an insult to the body, that your entire body goes into anabolic
mode (as in muscle building mode) to compensate for the stress that it was forced to
endure. Simply put...you MUST work out the legs, and I don't mean with leg curls or
leg extensions. I'm talking Squats or Deadlifts,
period. There are many excuses that people give as to why they can't squat, but I'm
not going to bother shooting them down...99% of the time..it's because you are doing it
wrong, or have been doing it wrong for so long that you finally hurt your knees. In
other words..don't look for excuses as to WHY you can't squat, look for reasons as to why
you CAN! Well..anyway, for the brave souls out there..here goes...
SQUAT
This baby is going to work every muscle from the waist down..well,
almost every muscle (heh). This one should definitely be done using a power rack, or
even a machine. Do not use some cheap bench that you have to lean over, to get the
bar on your traps...you'll kill your lower back, or even worse, decapitate yourself
somehow. Yes, it's that dangerous.
The Safety Lock pins should be a couple of inches below your lower
squat position. I recommend the lower squat position as when your thighs are
parallel to the ground, or even a little bit higher. Forget about the full squat
technique. Like Mr. McRobert states in his book,
"Learn to squat properly before you concern yourself with
poundage, and add weight slowly while maintaining perfect form."
Squat in sturdy shoes...I use boots myself. Athletic shoes
tend to be too spongy, and your toes are going to get mashed when the weight starts to get
REALLY heavy. Do not use a board under your heels, (it increases the chance of
damaging your knees), increase the flexibility of your Achilles tendon if you have
to.
The starting bar position should be at a level so you only have to
dip down a few inches to back into position. Any lower and you are wasting too much
energy. Use your traps (if you got them) as padding. Towels and pads make the
bar more unstable, and less controllable. Squeeze your shoulder blades together, and
place the bar so that it rides just above both your scapulae, and not on your
neck! Put your hands at the closest comfortable grip. Place your heels about
shoulder width apart, and point your toes out 45 degrees on each side.
If your knees come together on the ascent, the toes are not pointing
out enough...you'll know what I'm talking about when it happens. The knees must
track over the feet when flexing pr extending the legs. Like I said, start off with
just the bar if you have to to obtain proper form.
Once you have some serious weight on, keep your eys staring at a
point on the wall or mirror in front of you at about shoulder level. Trying to
keep the majority of the weight going straight down through your heels (i.e..don't bend
forward onto your toes), squat down to your predetermined lower squat level. Try to
keep your torso as tense as possible during the descent and ascent. There is no way
that you are going to keep your back perfectly vertical, so don't even try..you will lean
forward about 15-20 degrees. Before driving the weight back up, tense your torso
again, and push up. The bar if seen from the side should move as vertically as
possible. Your buttocks by the way shouldn't start rising faster than the bar, or
your hips shouldn't rise faster than your shoulders (something that I see done frequently
when people are using more weight than they can really handle). The bar should not
move forward at all.
This is the only exercise where I recommend that you lock out.
I also recommend breathing one or two breaths before the next rep, if not more.
I do twenty reps X 2sets of this, and I am wiped out for the next half hour (I
actually had to pause at the bottom of my stairs the first time I did 20 reps, since I had
no energy left in my legs to climb). If you are going to do any exercise correctly
and with strict form, this is the one. For this I recommend again Stuart McRobert's book.
If you get this exercise correct, you'll see results much faster (in terms of muscle mass
gains and weight loss). This exercise is that productive, and that hard. I
have to admit, I dread Mondays when I do legs, but after finishing those two sets,
especially if I progressed, I feel pretty damn proud of myself.
Calves
I really believe that your calves will get a good enough workout
from doing Squats, or even deadlifts, but if you must insist, do Calf Presses. Most
people know how to do these, so I won't bore you with the technique. The only thing
to keep in mind, is that your heels should never hit the ground between reps (spinal
compression), keep them about 1 inch above the ground at the lowest position. I have
also jumped rope for about 3 minutes after a calf workout, and they usually tell me how
hard they have been worked by cramping up in the middle of the night.