Hello everyone,
People on this board seem to love legs. Witness every single poster on the Photos forum being asked “where on the wheels.” Witness also the general idea that “squats and deads are the most important exercises.” I agree with you all that bodybuilders who neglect their legs and end up top-heavy with chicken legs look retarded. . .
. . . however I am seriously thinking of stopping leg training all together. First of all, I have naturally big legs. At 5’11, 185 lbs, my thighs are 24" and my arms are 15". I know that in his prime Arnold had 28" legs and 22" arms. So his legs were 16% bigger than mine and his arms were 50% bigger than mine. I’d say that I’m unbalanced.
Also, considerations of proportion aside, I’m not sure that I even want bigger legs, because quite frankly, no one admires big legs except bodybuilders. Look at the TRIBEX add on the T-Nation homepage. It’s a picture of a cut up torso, could you imagine it as a picture of legs? Or look at every cover of Men’s Health, which half of the body do they always feature prominently?
[And look, I know we all hate men’s health and shouldn’t be using any of their information, but I think their covers are a good indicator of what sort of body is valued in our society.] The bottom line is, so long as you don’t look out of proportion it’s going to be the your pecs, abs, and arms that attract women and intimidate men. [And yes I understand those aren’t the only reasons to bodybuild, but they are mine.]
I know some of you are thinking. “But if you don’t train legs you won’t get the beneficial full-body affects of stressing your largest muscle groups and your upper body will suffer.” On that one I call bullshit. Isn’t one of the reasons we train legs to avoid our upper bodies getting too large in proportion.
So, in conclusion, I think I could put a lot more into my upper body if I ditched the leg training. I find those exercises really taxing and I bet I could keep up a much greater intensity if I didn’t start with them when I arrived at the gym. And due to my genetic predisposition to large legs, I could probably gain 20 lbs of mass on my torso and not look unbalanced.
What do you guys think?