Muscular, tone and large legs look great. Your legs contain some of the biggest muscles in your body, including the glutes. Strong legs give you the power to build a strong body, but finding the best leg exercise sets that don’t kill you and that produce results can be tough.
What we’re going to do here is talk you through a simple set of five of the most powerful and best leg exercises out there for great results in as little as 21 days.
Plus, we are going to talk about avoiding injury, speeding up your recovery time from working out on your legs, and talk to you about supplements that can help you with strength, muscle development, and recovery.
How To Make Dreaded Leg Exercises Easier To Tolerate
Let’s be honest, leg exercises kill you. You have to keep pushing yourself, and the pain it causes, the exhaustion it causes, puts a lot of people off. So even if you set specific time aside to do leg exercises, we all know that feeling of dread, and sometimes you don’t do all the exercise you should, or you just skip it and tell yourself you’ll do it another day.
There are a few things you can do to make leg exercises easier:
- At least once per week make sure you do some leg exercises. Even if you’re not doing as many as you should, if you can just do these five easy leg exercise sets once per week (they will take just 20 minutes) then that pain and lack of endurance will rapidly disappear.
- Make sure you warm-up and warm down. Part of the pain and problem with leg exercises is the fact that your muscles are not warm. Also, if you’re not working them regularly, hamstring strains and knee problems can really cripple your performance and recovery.
- Use a supporting supplement like SARMs, can help to build strength, and build muscle more rapidly than you can naturally, which means you will get more reward for the same effort. We will cover that a bit more detail at the end of this guide to the best leg exercises you can do.
The 5 Top Leg Exercises For Strength And Muscle Growth
So what we’re going to talk through now five simple but effective leg muscle exercises that when put together will really help to boost your strength and muscle tone in as little as three weeks. Try to do three sets of eight as a minimum, 12 if you can. If you can’t do eight then drop the weight until you can.
1. Seated dumbbell calf raise
You’ll be sitting down for this one, either on an exercise bench or on a chair that allows you to put your foot flat on the floor. Place a weight, or another object around 2 inches in height on the floor in front of you and put your toes onto the weight.
Then place a dumbbell on your knees so that it sits either side securely. Hold it with one hand on top gently. Then raise your leg until it’s above the height of the weight/object on the floor, then return it slowly down. This small movement really focuses on the calves and does not work the hamstrings.
2. Goblet squat
The goblet squat is a staple leg exercise that is going to kill your thighs and can strain the hamstrings if you are not properly warmed up, or you try and do this with too much weight.
You’re basically going to hold one dumbbell cupped in both your hands like you’re cupping a goblet/chalice.
You’re then going to squat and power yourself up straight, lowering yourself down slowly between reps back into a squatting position. Just make sure you don’t let your buttocks go too much lower than your knees, try to keep them level when you are squatting, otherwise this puts less pressure on the knees when you drive upwards.
3. Barbell side lunge
For the barbell side lunge, you will need a barbell that is not too heavy, so you can manageably lift it onto your shoulders behind your neck and lunge with it.
You’re not going to do standard lunges where you either put your leg to the front and drop or move your leg to the back and drop (which is better for not putting pressure on the knee joint).
What you’re going to do for the barbell side lunge is take a large step to one side, and then carefully lunge down to that side, not putting too much pressure on the knee joint. These lateral lunges really do work the hip abductors and abductors. It’s an exercise done a lot to prepare in sports that use a lot of tight sidestepping, things like rugby, skiing, and tennis.
4. Barbell pistol squat
Hold a moderately heavy barbell with both hands under your chin. Then lift one leg off the floor and as you push it out in front of you squat down on the other leg. Then repeat for the other leg.
Make sure you drive the weight and power of the exercise through the heel on the ground and keep your leg strong and straight.
This is a tricky exercise, and you may need to even practice without the barbell to start off with. Be careful putting stress on your knee joint, and keeping your balance is not only tricky, but gives benefits for posture and muscle throughout your body as you try and maintain the pose going up and down.
5. Sumo squat
You’ll need a light barbell for this. You’re going to position it across the shoulders behind the neck. You’ll hold it with a relatively wide hand position.
This is like a regular two-legged squat, but you’re going to position your leg slightly wider, with your feet facing further out. As with the normal squat, don’t go too low at the bottom as this will place a lot of strain on your knees as you explode back upwards, so try to stay as parallel as you can.
Tips For Faster Recover Times
There are a few things you can do to get faster recovery times from doing the best leg exercises laid out in this guide:
- Make sure you leave a few days to break before repeating. Tired leg muscles, especially after the first few sessions before your strength builds, raises the risk of injury and fatigue, lengthening your recovery times.
- You need to eat well between sessions. A protein meal after your workout, even if it’s a protein shake, will do wonders. Fuel your muscle recovery.
- Make sure you warm down. If you don’t, you will suffer more muscle stiffness in the two days after you have completed these exercises, especially in the beginning. Some simple squats, side squats, calf stretches, touching your toes, simple muscle stretching exercises.
SARMs Can Dramatically Improve Your Results & Recovery
If you’re looking to improve your performance, results, and the speed at which you recover, then using SARMs to backup your workout regime can really help.
SARMs can help you to develop muscle at a far faster rate than you can naturally, alongside hard work you can see gains much more quickly, and the muscle is better quality.
Brilliant for building endurance is Cardarine, often called “a workout in a bottle” by the people who use it. It delivers a burst of energy through your workout, and beyond, helping with performance and recovery.
Or you could use something like Ligandrol. This is an anabolic SARM that mimics testosterone. You’ll be more aggressive to go through your workouts better, you’ll build more muscle, and you’ll recover faster. On the downside, you will suffer testosterone drops which will require post cycle therapy (PCT) treatment.
The best option though would be to stack SARMs to underpin your efforts. That way, doing the best leg exercises with good form and powering through the whole workout routine will really feel easier.
You could stack Cardarine and Ligandrol to boost your performance, muscle growth, and recovery.
Or you could swap out the Ligandrol for Andarine to get a similar result but with even more energy.
If you’re really struggling with endurance and recovery, you could stack two non-anabolic SARMs like Cardarine and Stenabolic together. These will deliver a huge punch in performance levels, help you to recover quicker, and you’ll build more muscle because of the way can push yourself further and for longer.
So look, these best leg exercises are easy to do if you get the reps right, and you can swap out these exercises for others as you develop, or increase the number you do. You can also increase the weight and the reps.
If you really want to take things to another level more quickly, then take a look at SARMs. They aren’t expensive, and as long as you use them responsibly, they are also pretty safe to use at normal doses.
