The quads are not tricky to target with your legs workouts. They’re the main muscles used to squat, perhaps the most popular exercise of all, so anyone who trains is likely to be working the quads regularly.
However, in a strange way that can actually mean you end up neglecting the quads to an extent, because they form a large muscle group with four heads and require more than squatting to target fully. Ideally you want to use a range of quad exercises to work the muscles from different angles using both isolation and compound moves with a variety of rep ranges.
This four-move workout is all about the quads, and if you’re used to only working your thighs through squats, trust us when we tell you that you’ll wake up the day after this session with DOMS in parts of your quads you’ve never noticed before.
1 Front squat
Sets 4 Reps 6-8 Rest 2min
Take a “clean” grip, hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. Position the bar on your collarbone and drive your elbows upwards. Un-rack the bar, and take two steps back. Check your stance is even with feet just outside shoulder width. Take a deep breath, brace your core and lower under control into a full squat. Think “sitting between your heels”, rather than “sitting back”. Throughout the movement keep your elbows up and in to maintain the “shelf” for the barbell. Once you hit the bottom position, drive back up through the mid-foot until you reach the start.
2 Bulgarian split squat
Sets 3 Reps 8-10 Rest 90sec
Position yourself in a staggered stance with your rear foot elevated on a step or bench. Lower by bending at the knee and hip while keeping your torso upright. When you reach the bottom drive back up, extending your knee and hip to return to the start position.
3 Leg press
Sets 3 Reps 10-12 Rest 90sec
Position yourself on the leg press machine and place your feet on the platform shoulder-width apart. Slowly lower until your knees are bent at least at a 90° angle. Keeping your whole foot in contact with the platform, engage your quads to press the weight back up. Don’t lock out your knees at the top.
4 Leg extension
Sets 2 Reps 12-15 Rest 60sec
Sit up straight on the leg extension machine and imagine you have a seat belt around your waist pulling your hips down into the seat. Use your quads to initiate the movement and avoid “kicking” the weight up. Extend your legs fully and pause for one second at the top, then lower under control.
Workout Tips To Build Big Quads
Squat deep
All those quarter squats might be good for your ego, but they aren’t maxing out your quad development. The quads are mechanically advantaged at the top of the lift, which means it’s easier for them to move weight. So squat as deep as you can with good form. Working below parallel forces the quads to work far harder and causes much higher levels of activation than quarter squats.
Get one-legged
“Single-leg work is great for stimulating the vastus medialis oblique or VMO, the teardrop-shaped muscle on the inside of the thigh,” says body composition expert Tom MacCormick. “This is because the opposing leg isn’t there to help stabilise and keep you in position. Without the aid of the opposing leg the working leg requires the VMO to kick in to aid stability, correct knee tracking and maintain alignment.”
Extend and flex
“Don’t ignore the leg extension if quad growth is your goal,” says MacCormick. “It causes high levels of activation in the rectus femoris, which flexes the hip and the knee. During squats the hip extension movement opposes the hip flexion function of the rectus femoris and limits its activation. But in the leg extension no hip extension occurs, so the rectus femoris can achieve higher levels of activation.”
More Quad Workouts
Once you’ve done the workout above a quadzillion times, you can move on to these other excellent quad workouts to keep challenging your legs.
The Rock’s Leg Day Finisher
Dwayne Johnson has never skipped leg day in his life, and to showcase the type of training he does he shared this full-on finisher on Instagram. It involves doing four exercises back to back – a monster set, for when supersets no longer suffice. Those moves are the leg press, hack squat, chain lunge and dumbbell sumo squat, and The Rock does five rounds.
See the The Rock’s leg day finisher
Leg Workout For Quads
This testing five-move leg workout requires a variety of free weights and a suspension trainer, so it’s best done at a gym. The moves are a mix of squats, lunges and step-ups, with a suggested rep range of 10 to 15 in each set, using a weight that makes the last few reps of each set a challenge.
See the quad-focused leg workout
Legs Workout To Build Bigger Legs
As we mentioned above, all good leg workouts will challenge your quads, and this muscle-building session is perfect for anyone in need of leg day inspiration. It’s a six-move workout with two straight sets followed by two supersets, and all the major muscle groups in the lower-body get in on the action.
See the leg workout
