I read Scott Abel’s lighter weights bigger legs article years ago but never gave that style of training a try.
I am starting my experiment with 20, 25, 30 rep back squats and lunges. Adding mass to my lower body is my priority this year and i will try something different.
Have you ever trained your legs this way? If yes, what was the result?
I personally get much better growth in my legs from higher rep training. I never really go below sets of 15 for legs.
Totally agree. I pre exhaust with sets of 20 leg extensions and then do sets of 10-15 on heels elevated front squats. If you can handle it, high rep single leg training is also incredible - the only problem is, 20 rep sets of Bulgarian Split Squats feel like 40 rep sets. Long story short, yes, I think the legs respond to high volume better than any other part of the body, but be prepared to hate yourself for choosing this approach.
I also prefer higher rep training anywhere from 10-50 reps. I struggled with lagging legs for many years, then I decided to ditch the classic heavy as possible power lifting style training and started implementing higher rep sets… Finally, my legs started to grow and I’ve never looked back.
I hope it works for me too. I am mentally prepared to do whatever it takes.
In the last couple weeks I’ve been pushing the 5/3/1 top set of squats to 20 reps. Followed with 3-5x10 goblet squats (not every single week tho), then 5x10 leg press (pyramid up) superset with 5x10 hack squat (fixed weight) - depending on how I felt at the end I could do a 20-30 rep lighter backoff set of leg press.
Basically most of my leg work is in the 20 reps at a time, it has definitely put size in my legs. What I noticed the most is the vastus medialis getting fuller and rounder, haven’t really looked at my legs in the mirror for a few weeks at first, and when I finally did and noticed the vmo my reaction was something like “where did this come from”.
I can’t do front squats right now but as soon as I’ll be able to I want to try heel elevated front squats after back squats, using Paul Carter’s 50% method to shoot for 20 total reps, or something like that.
This is very encouraging. I cant wait to start my new program!
agree with everyone else. I experienced the most leg growth with high rep training, specifically squats. I actually avoid it right now because I’d have trouble making weight if I added much more size to my legs, lol.
Last workout I did superset good mornings (3x8-10) with goblet squats (3x10), felt great hammering hamstrings and lower back first, then quads and upper back, just gotta be careful to give good mornings the proper attention for technique and form.
I’ve been thinking for a while about how the non-mirror muscles like rear delts, triceps, lats and such end up by really adding depth/thickness to overall upper body appearance, and guess hamstrings do the same for legs.
They don’t seem suited for high reps tho, so far I’ve felt the best stretch by doing good mornings and romanian deads at a fairly slow pace, 8-10 reps can become excruciating quickly.
Not necessarily high rep but high tension for sure. I’ve had recently success with stuff like 5020 tempo goblet squat or lumberjack squat, sets of 15 zercher squat, or circuit something like 6 ssb squat, 12 romanian db dl, 25 leg extension