I’m brand new to this board so I understand that my opinion doesn’t count for much …but here goes: I never used to work legs, at all, I don’t really know why not either because my job involves carrying a great deal of weight on my back for some pretty good distances. Anyway …I used to train like a wanna-be bodybuilder (isolation exercises, obscene amount of sets, lots of shrugs, etc) Of course I got results, but after a certain point there was no more. No big news to anyone here on this forum, but I hadn’t discovered t-mag yet. Last year I was overseas and while there I met a competetive powerlifter in the gym and srarted listening to what he had to say …now I do lots of squats (box squats at that), deads, romanian deads and good mornings - my legs are the most noticeable part of my physique, I have good traps and I haven’t trained them directly in over a year, and that weight on my back …what weight??? Anyway …my point after all this rambling? People see me doing box squats for example and always question what I’m doing, I try to explain that if you wanna grow you gotta squat - some listen, some just wait for me to finish so they can start their curls:) Scale of 1-10??? 10, easily!
CDNSapper: “I’m brand new to this board so I understand that my opinion doesn’t count for much …”
That’s one of the beautiful things about this place- everyone’s opinion is welcomed. Nice to see another fellow Canadian posting.
Thanks …I’ve been meaning to register for a while now but never felt I had anything to contribute. I’m looking forward to gaining and sharing knowledge and experience with you all.
Okay I am not going to say yes or no all I can do is reiterate things I have heard read and seen.
Some guys at the gym that I train at have incredible physiques and refuse to train legs… hmmm anecdotal I know but still worth a mention… some of you know doubt will say that this is genetic… Im not sure about all of them but I’m positive that at least a couple of the most admired guys in the gym did work for their physiques and are not genetically gifted and managed to do it without a single squat or deadlift.
I however have heard arguments about the hormonal response to squats etc being able to provide a stimulus for growth for the entire body… Makes sense to me…
So maybe the guys i mentioned first would have got to where they are quicker if they had trained legs… im not sure…
While many earlier posters said that lower body training is necassery and made some valid points i would have to disagree with at least a couple…
CGB asked “For that matter, ever see a truly big strong guy that doesn’t work his legs?” to that i would have to answer. Yes, many big guys, and yes a several strong guys and a couple of big and strong guys…
Kenny Patterson a world record holder in the bench press outlines his raining in an article called the specialist at westside barbell’s website elitefitnesssystems he does not mention a single leg exercise.
The URL is
http://www.elitefts.com/documents/thespecialist.htm
I have heard that Kenny competes in ‘full’ meets so he must do some leg work, but it doesnt look like he was at the time that he wrote that article, and if the biggest bencher in the world thinks he doesnt need to squat to improve his bench who am i to argue…
Patricia eluded that squats , deadlifts and oly lifts are great training tools and that they can develop much of the back musculature which is absolutely true… but to say that there will be no growth if you dont do x or y is an exageration.
Bill Roberts has stated on the forums here that he performs no squats or deadlifts and that his main exercises for the legs is leg extensions/curls. Now if this is true, he IS training his lower body but will NOT be getting ANY the benefits outlined by those that said training the lower body was necassery.
So not much of a step of logic away from that and you would say that leg training atleast as describe thus far by the leg training advocates is not supported by Bill Roberts either…
That leads us to the next point… Is it the TYPE of lower body training which is important? I would say yes… but then again why would someone as knowledgeable
hmmm… so im guessing that leg work will help but development of a good upper body can probably be done without it…
Another thing to consider… what people define as built etc is highly individual… Someones big is someones massive but also someones small…
how important is training lower body to developing your upper body?
I got no fucking idea
I was thinking about something very similar today during my Limping training.
Here’s my 2 cents…
When I first started training I didn’t work legs at all for the first 6 months. I spent 4-5 days a week doing upper body work (allowing for half decent recovery requires a decent split). That said I have to meantion that I’ve been a track athlete, swimmer and football player for many of the years prior to my serious lifting. So as you can imagine, my legs were pretty thick. So my decision was primarily based on letting my upperbody catch up to my lower body. I think it worked wonders for me. I then hit a point where I thought I roughly evened out, and then added a 2 day (both ham and quad) leg workout. Over the last 4 months, or so, I’ve changed that to a 2 day (quad dominant, and hip dominant) split. This is also working wonders for me. I find I have improved recovery and can focus better and push harder on both hams/glutes and quads.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that it really depends on the condition of your friends body. We know not to overwork your anterior shoulders and let your posteriors lag. And so if we’ve got lagging posterior shoulders we stop doing anterior directed movements FOR A WHILE and concentrate on posterior. When the problem gets corrected we RE-INTRODUCE anteriors. I don’t particularly think there’s anything wrong with doing the same for upper and lower body. What I do think is that people don’t use this logic behind their training. Instead it’s laziness, or they only want to work chest and arms.
Its pretty simple if you don’t squat clean, snatch, dead or sprint your a pussy. These lifts are hard work and hard work is what it takes to have a powerful body.
will42
To a large extent hormones determine our physical appearance as much if not moreso then training, diet, etc. In a study done on testosterone, people taking 600 mg per week of test and doing no training at all still gained twice as much muscle as the natural trainers! My point is that hard and heavy leg training has an effect on anabolic hormones which spill over to the entire body and i would say the less genetically gifted one is, the greater the effect they’ll get from doing the hard leg training. This carryover does seem to occur moreso for muscle growth. When strength is a key and muscle mass disregarded, IMO hard lower body training taxes the nervous system to such a large extent it can make it difficult to gain strength in the upper body…at least i’ve found this true in my case.
doing heavy hard leg movements, squats, deads, stiff-legs, is a prime example of “synergy”
At the gym twhere I lift there is this guy who obviously has been training for a very large part of his 45-50 years on this planet. He’s about 5’ 4" and approximately 200 pounds. I used to find myself admiring him for being his age and still working out, pushing himself and never seeming to miss a workout. Then one day I looked down at his legs and almost screamed like a little girl. His legs are so skinny they look like they are going to snap when he walks and he walks around all proud of himself for being so big upstairs. He has absolutely no ass and his gut hangs over the tops of his tiny little legs and has shoulders so rounded forward he looks like an ape, but oh boy, he’s got a 52 inch chest and 22 inch arms.
I have never seen him do a single compound lift, has never even walked near a barbell, a squat rack, calf machine etc. 5 days a week all he does is arms, dumbell chest presses and pull downs. He has his wife doing exactly the same exercises and she looks very similar to him, except she isn’t fat.
Now I find myself feeling sorry for him. I want to talk to him about his problem, but of course that’s not the right thing to do, but I can barely control myself. I can’t imagine being proud of myself for having a gigantic chest, huge arms, no back and twigs for legs. How much satisfaction would this give me? Zero. If I could somehow get a picture of this guy I’d post it for everyone to see. Not because I want people to have a laugh at his expense, but because it would be a fantastic learning tool. Want to have an unbalanced, unhealthy, structurally unsound physique? Want to look like this? Might scare some people straight.
Well you better as hell be training your legs. Isn’t everyone into having huge calves that look like diamonds. But to answer your question I know this Guy who weighs about 250 but has probably like 15 inch calves. His arms are over 20 inchs and chest is great too. Its possible to be huge with little legs. But then you walk around with jeans in the summer wearing nothing but cut off shirts cause thats all you have to show off.
Whos gives a shit if his mates dont do leg exercises. Thats cool if that what they want, not everyone wants to deadlift 700lbs
I have mates that want that CK look and never do any leg weights, just running etc. They mostly want to look good with no shirt on, and the ladies sure as hell think they look better than me. All i get is “why do you want to be so big” and it gets tiring, as im sure you all know
Personally i would rather be big and strong than little and ripped…
well i remember reading on this sight that lower body development inproves upper body delelopment. the other day i saw a guy bench press almost 500lbs, looked like a greek god too. but his legs didn’t look nearly as big as his arms, so it would seem less important than i once thought, from a body building perspective.