[quote]staystrong wrote:
[quote]panzerfaust wrote:
[quote]staystrong wrote:
Squats and deadlifts are not essential, or sometimes even the best choice, for building muscle. Due to injuries and surgeries I can’t do them, which was hard to accept at first because those have always been my best lifts and I honestly enjoy them.
Alternatives for legs are leg presses (2 leg or 1 leg), lunges (either DB or smith lunges, which are my favorite), leg curls, RDL’s, leg extensions. Leg press and lunges may not be in the cards for you, but the weight is significantly lower for lunges so maybe it works. Doing leg curls, RDL’s, leg extensions and then smith lunges would be a good set up for example to still hit the legs hard while working to reduce the weight on your back.
Pre-fatiguing works well like ActivitiesGuy was pointing out. Make it a goal to get the most amount of work from your muscle while using the lowest weight. Organize your exercise selection in a way that maximizes this (i.e. do the bigger, heavier compounds and lifts later in the workout when the target muscle is already tired).
Using higher reps also helps lighten the weight you’re using.
Also, avoiding locking out or pausing fatigues the muscle more, causing you to have to use lighter weight yet still beating up the muscle.[/quote]
Thanks for the input man. You’re right, there is more than one way to skin a cat… or a leg in this case.
I leg pressed last week on both a flat and 45d press and found as long as I consciously avoided tensing my core, it was just fine.
Current plan is:
Leg extension
Leg Curl
45d Leg Press (feet positioned high to target hammys)
Flat Leg Press (feet position low to target quads)
Calves
I’d never considered Smith Lunges (I assume the same thing as Smith Split Squats?) but I will give them a whirl on legs day and see how they go.
I really like the idea of this pre-fatiguing and started using it today with humbling results, but I felt like I got more use out of my muscles than the same workout last week.
Cheers![/quote]
Yeah smith lunges are just split squats. For some reason I have it in my head smith lunges is the right way to name them but I think I might actually be wrong.
Either way, a good exercise. I do all reps for one leg then switch, avoid lockout. One thing to note if you do it this way and don’t take a rest between legs (in the same set) is you may become pretty winded fast. But they work to hit the legs without having a lot of weight on your back.[/quote]
Haha sweet as, was just checking you weren’t talking about reverse smith lunges, which I also saw on google.