Leg day has arrived and you need something new. You’ve gone with high volume. You’ve tried low-volume. You’ve attempted every variation of failure sets and intensity techniques dictated in the oh-so-famous Weider principles. You’ve knocked yourself around the gym just about every way you know how. Well, it’s time for something new. Let’s conduct a thigh workout consisting of six-set supersets for front thighs, followed with 12×5 for the hamstrings.
Start in an empty gym, either in the middle of the day or late at night. This kind of training, six-set supersetting, cannot be completed in a crowded gym. Don’t even try. You’ll need to monopolize up to six exercises at a time, a training practice which won’t make you very popular in most commercial gyms at 5 pm on a Tuesday! Here is the workout you will be completing.
Six-set supersets
Exercise #1 – 15 repetitions of leg extensions
Immediately followed by
Exercise #2 – Front barbell squats – 10 repetitions
Immediately followed by
Exercise #3 – leg press – 10 repetitions
Immediately followed by
Exercise #4 – leg adductor machine – 10 repetitions
Immediately followed by
Exercise #5 – leg abductor machine – 10 repetitions
Immediately followed by
Exercise #6 – leg extensions to failure. Reduce the weight using the pin 3 to 4 times during this final painful set.
Immediately followed by a sure collapse on the floor!
Once you’ve completed this rotation three times for your front thighs, it’s time to blast your hamstrings, or leg biceps. Saturating the back of your thighs will take less than five minutes, and you’ll be limping home in no time! Here is the working, called 12×5, that you will be using for hamstrings.
12×5
Select a movement you would like to use for overall leg development. Leg curls for hamstring development is a useful movement for 12×5’s. You will be completing 60 total repetitions in less than five minutes. Start with a weight you are capable of moving for 12 repetitions. Complete 12 leg curls. Then count to 12. Complete 12 more repetitions. You should be hurting a it by now. Count to 12 once again before starting your third set of 12 repetitions with the same weight. The next 12 seconds of rest will
On the final twelve repetitions of this 60-rep set, you may find yourself breaking form or taking a few seconds’ rest between each repetition. This is entirely acceptable. You have reached muscle failure several times by this point, and you are forcing yourself to train beyond it. This isn’t easy, and will certainly be very painful.
You’ll notice this workout doesn’t include many heavy compound movements. This is intentional. The workout has been designed in this manner to allow trainers to safely train their front thighs to failure without fear of injury. You’d never have a set of heavy barbell squats following 40 or 50 repetitions of other leg movements. The chance of failure is very high at this point, on any repetition. It’s fine to fail on the leg press machine – but doing so during a heavy set of barbell lunges could lead to serious injury. Remember the key to success is smart, consistent lifting in which you shock your body by training in a new manner. Results will follow!
