Does anyone know the scientific reason you must train legs to grow? We have all seen someone who had a decent upper body but no wheels. Eventually they stop growing until they start training legs . I’m looking for more than cns response, or variety. I would especially like to see an article that makes fun of these chicken-legged poeple and then explains the scientific reasons behind this phenomena. I’ve checked the search engine and come up with nothing. Help anyone? I’d like to see theories too, if any of you have any.Thanks
i think that it has a lot to do with crossover strength or muscle synergy maybe. especially with legs because they are such a large powerful muscle group. i also think it has a lot to do with confidence. if you can throw 405 on the bar and bang out reps with it on the squat it kind of makes everything else seem a little easier.
It’s also a matter of hormones. Training quads, hams, and glutes, all of which are extremely large and powerful muscles groups, leads you body to produce a lot more GH, which will help you grow more overall. There’s a lot more too it but GH release is a large factor
In natural bodybuilders most of this is probably due to the hormonal effects hard leg training has on the rest of the body coupled with the fact that the body does not like to be too much out of balance. Interestingly enough I also think this can work in reverse. Extremely intense and/or frequent leg training can bring muscular growth and strength in the upper body to a standstill. I’ve dealt with this myself in the past but part of my problem is that I seem to have the upper and lower bodies of 2 different people. Very naturally weak and underdeveloped upper body and naturally strong and explosive lower body. Turns out I need much more frequency in the upper body for muscle growth which can only be accomplished with a reduction in the volume of leg training.
You sound just like me on the whole naturally small and weak upper body, and naturally big and strong lower body. I too, am starting to realize that my best gains in upper body size occur when I drastically cut down the volume for my legs.
I’m in the exact same boat…most of my life I was involved in competitive downhill skiing, along with years of skateboarding, power skating, biking and snowboarding. In short I’m all legs. I just designed a new training program for myself yesterday where I’ll be training each upper body group 2x/week and each leg group 1x/week, this is changed from my old 2x/week of every mucle group previously. I’ve also switched from a 3 way split with a dedicated leg day to a 2 way split with leg excersizes at the end of my workout. Over time I’m hoping this will increase upper body proportions relative to lower…tonight’s the first w/o in this new program…very pumped!!
I also have well developed legs and what I think is an underdeveloped upper body (mostly shoulders and lats). I can tell you that cardio for my legs seems to be enough. They are so solid and so well trained from years of martial arts, soccer, and snowboarding I really can’t do much else with them. I can press 400 easily on the hammer iso leg press and my calves will lift nearly 400 on the donkey press and they usually never get sore! Its bizarre because they aren’t really big, they’re just very heavy and very solid. I’ve also tried training my upper body and torso only for weeks at a time and noticed greater gains as well as more cuts in my legs! Weird huh? If I leave them alone I grow up top faster while lossing more weight throughout my ass and upper legs.
The balance issue, Ill focus on the core, would certainly contribute IMHO. Heavy LB work would strengthen the core and thus encourage the body to allow more force production from the body without risk to the spine for example. GH release and CNS carryover should contribute here. After all CNS works bi-laterally to maintain balance so why not superiorly on UB.
Thanks for all of your answers. The GH response makes sense. By the way, most of us wish we had bigger wheels. Mine are strong, but could use some girth. One day they will catch my upper body.
90% of the peeple i kno dont train legs. In my gym the ratio of bench and curls to a squat is probably a million to 1, but thers tons of huge guys…im sure the sauce doesent hurt
It is a myth.
You don’t need to train legs for your upper body to grow, in fact most bench press specialists (George Halbert (700+ @215lbs), Kenny Patterson, and a lot of others) don’t do any leg work at all. Muscle magazine hype, IMO.
A friend of mine studying in kinesiology told me once that every pound of upperbody weight puts 10 pounds of pressure on your spine. It doesn’t take a math genius to understand that the body will want to protect itself, so it’s likely it will shutdown all Upper body growth to save itself.
Hope it makes some sense,
-LPdSB
Pardon my ignorance, but how does that work? How does one pound turn into ten?
hmmm i know jm blakely does some kind of quad work i wouldnt be suprised if halber did too
the 2 best reasons to train legs for a ‘regular’ guy would be A)to look balanced B) strengthen areas to prevent injury i.e. knees and lower back. my dad tore up both of his knees playing in a work basketball league and i dont remember how he messed up his back. hopefully squating can help me prevent these things
There was a study a while ago that sets of isolation movements produced just as much GH as compound movements.
Everybody seems to be pretty jazzed over this GH increse when you train legs or whatever. I don’t think it matters. I know its been researched that the transient hormonal (GH and Test) elevations that happen when you have shorter, intense workouts don’t mean anything, and i think it would be the same for the small increase in GH you’d see when training legs as opposed to not training them. Think about it, bodybuilders who inject GH usually do it at a minimum 4-10 iu daily to see results, and the big boys at the olympia are takin way more than that. Do you really think a couple sets of squats will make your GH rise anywhere near that?