Legs will not grow

[iraqiwarrior]

wtf im soooo angry about this im on deca 600mg /week test e 500mg /week dbol 30 mg Ed and my ****ing legs have not grown at all. My leg workouts are soo great their phenomenal actually because when im done i cant even drive good and when i sleep i am tempted to take pain killers because my quads/hammies are sooo tierd. The next day theyre VERY sore and yet they never grow its rediculous even on a cycle man just really depressing makes someone want to give up on this sport. When im squatting i go even when i feel like i cant go anymore just to get in those last few reps.

Squat 6x15
Leg press 4x12
lunges 4x15
leg extensions 5x15
stiff leg dl 4x12

27
202
bf: ? between 12-15%
5'7

my diet is on point i dont wanna put all that shit up but i eat like a pig but healthy food like rice chicken eggs steak fish pasta...etc split into 7 meals a day 4000 cals +

[zoltans4]

how often is legs? once weekly? if they aren't recovering they aren't growing

[iraqiwarrior]

once a week and i give them plenty rest idk am i genetically retarded or something

[FuzzyPeaches o.O]

Have you tried a lower rep routine?

[iraqiwarrior]

ive tried low rep with heavy weight ive tried the 20 rep thing i go parallel all the way as well. hammies to calves.

[zoltans4]

without a doubt I know people that are 'unable' rather 'have to work twice as hard as others' to gain in the legs comparo to upper body. And then there are those that could care less and want the upper body, seems like your busting your ass tho. I know there are so many 'ways' to mix up a routine and can only say what worked for me, but our stats aren't even close. Im sure someone will have something good to try.

[iraqiwarrior]

yea man its just depressing.....and i put in so much work...wtf is the point if it will not grow

[baseline_9]

IMO

Volume is too high

Drop volume to one working set per exercise ( use this as an all out set and the sets before as warm ups)

Training too light, 5-10 rep range may help you to progress.

Progressive tension overload is the key to growth (and surplus calories etc..)

Are you being progressive in ur workouts, my bet is no since ur volume is too high IMO

[baseline_9]

Are you actually gaining weigh every few weeks?

[iraqiwarrior]

yes ive put on 17 lbs... ok ill try 5-10 rep heavy

[baseline_9]

I think the volume is more of a barrier that the reps.

Squat full depth

Leg press full depth

Not just to parallel

One working set for whole legs (squats)

One working set for quads(hack squats or extension)

And one working set for hams (RDL or curls)

Log your reps and weights used and try to make some sort of progress every 2 weeks if you can, if u go more than a month with no increase in weight then ur not progressing

[PistolStarta]

Whats your 6x15 squat weight?

[iraqiwarrior]

135 225(2x) 275(2x) 295

[zoltans4]

although I hate to generalize, I would agree that it is probably not a challenging enough weight (70% 1rm +), for your body to respond with size, only endurance... however some people gain size that way.

[scotty51312]

A reverse pyramid workout did wonders for me when i hit a growth plateu. Start with a warm up set then go to your 3rep max then 5 rep then 8 rep then 12 rep. Really hits the fast twitch muscle hard.

[Lifeguard102]

To the OP . Great post. You're not the only one believe me.
To start, I'd like you to think of the legs of a champion cyclist.
Or maybe you have biking exp. Huge, cut, striated, and vascular.
Just what we BB want right?

Now , think of their routine, extremely high volume, angles and mixed resistance.

Train your legs this way.

Start with extensions. Go for reps of 18-20.
Move to leg press, place your feet dead center about 6 in apart.-
this will contribute to the coveted sweep.
finally- squats stay within the range that only hits quads and keep it there.
try not to activate the hammy's at all.

do hammies on another day.

By hitting the quads with high volume, different angles, mixed resistance,or weights, and Mainly ISOLATION. Your legs will grow.

I hope this helps , it has for my stubborn legs. PM for hammies if you like
Life

[Natureboy71]

Not trying to be an azz but is your gear fake?

[SomeRandomGuy]

295 for 15-20 reps is killer. How can you not get gains from that? Try 330-355 for 12 instead or something.

[Jahcuree]

too many sets and reps IMO.

Straight outa 'Super Squats'

- 20 rep squats (3 breaths in between after rep 10) heavy as you can handle, keep building up
- Stiff legged deadlifts 2x15

Legs done. (not including warmuo sets)

Works great for me but im extreme hardgainer. Goodluck

[Lifeguard102]

Before I give you anymore advice , Explain your screen name please.

[ds53]

I have been lifting for a lot of years and for my legs to grow I warm up on the bike for about 10 mins, some light extensions and ham string curls. Then 1 light set of squats for about 10-12 reps and ramp on up in a hurry doing 5-8 reps, then 3-5 reps for 2 sets, drop down quite a bit of poundage and do a set with the feet about a foot apart and rep out. Move on to the leg press, do 1 medium weight set of about 10 and 2 sets of 5-8. Then a few sets of light extension and curls. Then 30 minutes on a stationary bike at a medium level and work the lactic acid out. Its amazing what that will do for the extreme soreness you get a day or two later from squats. I will ride that bike every day, some days pretty easy load and some days a SOB load depending on how the legs are feeling. I will taper off the SOB load a few days before leg day. By leg day my legs are completely healed and ready. Keep blood going through them every day. They will grow

[Bulkn]

I got some good results switching squats and legpress around- doing leg press first then squats second with a bit lighter weight.

[iraqiwarrior]

thanks for all the advice guys and the gear is real ive put on 17lbs in 5 weeks and i have major acne now on shoulders. and my screen name is iraqiwarrior because im iraqi.

[ScotchGuard02]

I have a similar problem as you. My whole family has a hard time putting mass onto our legs. After 30 years of steady training my legs are nothing like my buddy's. I wonder if genetically I just have less muscle tissues in my legs. I've done 3 cycles now and my legs are much bigger. They're just more defined. At this stage I'm taking definition over nothing. Keep going. What else are we to do?

[baseline_9]

I have receintly read an article by lyle mcdonald whaere he talks about how the lower body has much less androgen receptors than the upper body. He also mentions how since the arnold era there has been much more, year round steroid use. He beleived this may be why today the guys have much more developed thighs than back in the 70's.

However i still stick with my original post,

Volume too high

Intensity too low

Lack of progressive tension overload

[tembe]

squat till you puke

[TKO Performance]

Very interesting thread. It's tough to comment constructively, because I simply do not have this problem. In fact I have to intentionally lighten my leg workouts and do less heavy work to keep my legs in proportion to my upper body. If I went all out I'd look like Tom Platz.

There are two schools of thought on how to build muscle size. One camp will say to use heavy weight at low reps. The other will say to use very high reps at light weight. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Using high weight for low reps tends to build only a few fibers very strongly. The work being done is a lot, but the time interval is so short that you do not get maximum muscle fiber recruitment. This leads to people being able to lift some very impressive poundages, but not having a lot of mass. Look at any strength sport where there are weight classes and this is how you will see guys train. They don't get massive, but they are incredibly strong for their weight.

However, using lighter weights for more reps tends to recruit maximum muscle fibers. The effect is that instead of having a few super thick fibers, you end up with many slightly thickened fibers, and this makes the muscles look bigger visually. Strength will not be as impressive as the look though. This is why many BBs are not as strong as you'd expect. It's also why there is no direct correlation between strength and muscle size.

The key I have found is to take a page from both books. Then you build strength and size. I feel the two are complimentary if done on different weeks. The heavy work allows you to gain weight rapidly on your lighter work, and that's going to contribute to maximum size gain.

I'd suggest an A Week/B Week routine. On A Weeks do a heavy pyramid of squats or leg press, followed by seated leg extensions, followed by leg curls or straight leg deadlifts. Finish up with some calf raises.

On B weeks do straight sets of 12 reps on all exercises.

Throw in some deadlifts, and keep the exercises varied, but not so varied that you are not making progress in terms of increasing poundages.

My suspicion is that even training once a week your volume may still be overtraining. You should be sore the next two days, but if you can barely walk the next day I tend to think you are overdoing it.

[dieseljimmy]

yes ive put on 17 lbs... ok ill try 5-10 rep heavy

I trained my legs heavy for years and they are strong but not big. I recently reduced the wieght for really high reps and have found my legs to respond much better. I'm talking 25-50 range to failure with moderate wieghts.

[baseline_9]

Reps Per Set for Optimal Growth
I’m going to throw out a weird hypothetical question that I want readers to consider before continuing with this article.
If you had to pick a single repetition range to train in for growth, what would it be?
That is, imagine some very strange situation where you could only train within a certain range (and let’s make that range something a little less vague then ‘Between 1-20 reps’ by limiting it to a 3 rep range) for the rest of your lifting career, what would it be?
I used to ask this of friends of mine in the field and, almost with exception, the answer was pretty much the same. This was true regardless of whether or not they had arrived at that value from experimentation and experience or just looking at the research.
I’m going to take a quick look at the research (including a bunch of seemingly disparate topics) to tell you what I’d pick.

What Makes Muscle Grow?
I asked a job supervisor that question once once; he was a smart-ass like me and told me “It needs lots of sunlight and water.” Close but not quite.
The mechanism of muscle growth has been under heavy scrutiny for years and a lot of theories and ideas have come and gone in terms of both the mechanism of growth as well as what stimulates it. Semi-amusingly, about 98% of the actual answer was known back in the 70’s.
In an exceptional paper (which I recommend the reading of to any nerds in the field) titled “Mechanism of work induced hypertrophy of skeletal muscle” a researcher named Goldspink pretty much laid it out concluding that:
It is suggested that increased tension development (either passive or active) is the critical event in initiating compensatory growth.
Basically, the development of high levels of tension within the muscle is the key factor in initiating the growth process. I’d note that there are also some elements of fatigue that may be contributing to what ‘turns on’ the growth response. Finally, I’d note that in order to keep stimulating growth beyond an acute training bout, there has to be an increase in tension. Basically, over time you have to add weight to the bar.
Which as another great scientist in the field (Ronnie Coleman) summed up thusly:
Everybody wants to be a bodybuilder, but nobody wants to lift no heavy-ass weights.
The simple fact is that, outside of heavy drug users (steroids having the capacity to stimulate growth without even training), the biggest bodybuilders are the strongest. They grow because they provide, over time, a progressive tension overload (of course there are more variables that go into this, total workload per workout, frequency of training and diet all interact here).
But as I have been pointing out for years and years and years, if you’re not adding weight to the bar over time, you’re simply not growing. You can focus on the feel and the pump and the squeeze all you want; if you’re using the same weights 6 months from now that you’re using today, you won’t be any bigger.
Which doesn’t mean that you have to add weight at every workout (the fallacy of HIT), simply that over time you have to be lifting more weight. But progression over time is a whole separate article.
Anyhow, the summary of this section is that a combination of tension overload (with a possible contributor of fatigue) within skeletal muscle fibers is what turns on the growth response. Just remember that, what stimulates growth is tension and fatigue (with tension playing a relatively larger role in terms of actual contractile growth).
Which brings us to the next question: what’s the best way to develop that combination of tension and fatigue within skeletal muscle (or a given fiber)?

A Quick Tangent into Some Neurophysiology
When you look at strength production, the body has essentially two methods to increase force output which are
Muscle fiber recruitment
Rate coding
Muscle fiber recruitment is exactly what it sounds like, how many of the fibers within a muscle are actually being recruited. Contrary to the exceptional silliness which is endlessly repeated in books and on the internet, most people can actually get pretty close to 100% fiber recruitment (it’s a little bit lower in the lower body but, in the triceps for example, people can get near 100% recruitment).
Rate coding referes to how quickly the body is sending electrical signals to that muscle. As rate coding goes up, the muscle fires harder.
Now, in the muscles we’re interested in from a sports or bodybuilding standpoint, the body will generally use recruitment to increase force production up to about 80-85% of maximum force output (in the lab, this is measured with Maximal Voluntary Isometric Contraction or MVIC, which is effectively 1 rep maximum weight). Beyond 80-85% of maximum, it uses rate coding.
I’d note for completenes that this isn’t true for some muscles in the body, notably stuff like the eye muscles and finger muscles. In those muscles, recruitment is used up to about 50% of MVIC and rate coding handles the rest. Which is a lot of why studies looking at the thumb muscles aren’t really relevant to most training applications. But I digress.
Anyhow, now we have the next part of the picture, the body will recruit more fibers up to about 80-85% of maximum; above that point, there is no further recruitment and force output is improved via rate coding.
I should note that even at lower intensities, as the individual goes to fatigue, eventually all muscle fibers will end up being recruited. But they won’t have been recruited until fairly late in the set (e.g. the last few repetitions).

Putting it Together
And this leads us to our answer to my original question. For most people, 80-85% of maximum is roughly 5-8 repetitions there is variance in this between individuals and perhaps muscle groups (for example, some people find that they can get 12-15 repetitions at 85% of maximum in some leg movements).
Now let’s put that together with my comments about tension and fatigue from the earlier in the article.
Imagine that you put 95% on the bar, which will let most people get about 2 reps. You wouldn’t increase fiber recruitment (remember, it maxes at 80-85%) but you would drastically decrease any fatigue because you would be getting a lot less reps per set (and most people couldn’t do many sets of 2 at 90% so their total volume per workout would be much lower).
Or say you wanted to do 15 repetitions which, for most is about 70% of maximum. If you take it to failure, you will in fact end up recruiting all muscle fibers; however many of them (and this especially holds for the highest threshold fibers, the ones with the potential for the most growth) won’t have been recruited until near the very end. So those highest threshold fibers won’t be exposed to high tension and fatigue for very long.
In contrast, imagine that you work in the 5-8 rep range with 80-85% of maximum. First and foremost you will get full muscle fiber recruitment from the first repetition. Secondly, you will maximize fatigue/metabolic work/volume within that range. Basically, that range of reps and intensities is the one that will give an optimal balance of tension/recruitment and fatigue/metabolic work.
And that’s the answer that repeatedly comes up among people in the field who aren’t clueless: 5-8 repetitions. If you had to pick a single rep range to work at to optimize the growth response, it would 5-8 reps per set.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t valid and valuable reasons to work in other repetition ranges, mind you. But that wasn’t the original context of my weird hypothetical.

[TKO Performance]

I agree with your points in theory, but in practice things are never that simple. I have found that dropping down to sets of six or even eight has a detrimental effect on long term strength and growth. My greatest gains are always made with sets of ten for most body parts. I think however that how you apply yourself to a workout ultimately dictates your results. I find most people fail too early. They fail from lack of mental toughness, lack of discipline, and fear of pain. They also get caught in the mindset that if you are doing sets of ten you only do ten reps, when if you can mange the reps, particularly on your last set you should go for max reps (be it 10,12,or more).

You also have to make your target constantly moving. You should see improvement every month if you are training and dieting properly. If you are not then something is wrong.

Let's take bench for example. If you start with a weight for sets that you can do 4 sets of ten with you have started too low. You should pick a weight that allows your sets to look more like this: set 1-10 reps, set 2-10 reps, set3-9 reps, set 4-7 reps. The following week you do a heavy pyramid routine with sets of 10/8/6/4/drop, where you do the following: set 1-10 reps, set 2-7 reps, set 3-5 reps, set 4-2or3 reps, drop set 10-12 reps. The third week, where you go to do flat sets again you should start to fill in the reps on those last sets, and maybe get all ten on each set. Once you get full reps on each set you bump up the next week you do that workout by 10 pounds and start over again. Same for the heavy pyramid. If everything is right you should be packing reps and weight on at about 10 lbs a month or more.

Mental attitude means a lot. If you go to lift and have yourself convinced that you can't do the weight, or can't do full reps you will fail 9 times out of 10. If you know that you can do it, not think that you can do it, you will succeed 9 times out of 10. Remember that for most people when pushed the mind will fail before the body. Lifting heavy is very mental.

[iraqiwarrior]

squat till you puke

nearly do i dont throw up but my stomach starts hurting like crazy

[lovbyts]

You have been given some good advice. Mix it up. It's easy for your body to get use to a routine. It needs shocked. Find what does work for you. Dont forget to eat, feed them. It takes food/protein for muscle to grow.

I also agree, fewer reps and not to many sets either. find a good middle ground.

[SuperBird]

your legs will grow. ive seen the smallest legs grow. and put on substantial size. for me, low reps and high weight work nicely. there is no way in hell i can tell you what would or should work for you. your muscle density is different, your diet is different you genetics are different in every way. it might take a while for you to learn it, but thats part of building.

im just now learning that for years i may be over resting. and just maybe over training. it doesnt occur to me though because i put on gains really nicely. but i know i can ALWAYS improve.

the only guy i ever seen that douldnt (didnt/couldnt) make his legs grow, was huge above the waiste. really huge. it literally looked like he had two golf balls for calves. and he would wear two pair of thick socks to the gym doubled over to thicken his calves to ankles. i heard him talking one day, he was a complete idiot. and im sure wouldnt take anyones advice. he would train his upper body hard, but his leg work outs were very quick if i ever seen him do them. i never seen him give his legs a good workout in five years, only upper body. hes the only guy i ever seen that did not make gains to the legs. ive seen two or three that just kept trying and made excellent progress.

for me personally, your reps are high. i learned that much higher weight and lower reps were just right for me. and i did that high rep thing for a year before finding a better routine when i started. you will do it man. just stay focused. and do not let negative thoughts about it affect you.

[ScotchGuard02]

This is probably some of the best feedback on legs I've read.

[iraqiwarrior]

yea im gonna use it all

[TKO Performance]

the only guy i ever seen that douldnt (didnt/couldnt) make his legs grow, was huge above the waiste. really huge. it literally looked like he had two golf balls for calves. and he would wear two pair of thick socks to the gym doubled over to thicken his calves to ankles. i heard him talking one day, he was a complete idiot. and im sure wouldnt take anyones advice. he would train his upper body hard, but his leg work outs were very quick if i ever seen him do them. i never seen him give his legs a good workout in five years, only upper body. hes the only guy i ever seen that did not make gains to the legs. ive seen two or three that just kept trying and made excellent progress.

I call that Jersey Shore Body Syndrome. I knew a lot of guys like that in college. Looked like an orange on a toothpick. Always talking about how much they could bench, which was never as impressive as you'd think either (probably due to the under developed legs). My retort would always be to ask what they could squat or deadlift. Blank stares all around.

[SuperBird]

I call that Jersey Shore Body Syndrome. I knew a lot of guys like that in college. Looked like an orange on a toothpick. Always talking about how much they could bench, which was never as impressive as you'd think either (probably due to the under developed legs). My retort would always be to ask what they could squat or deadlift. Blank stares all around.

[iraqiwarrior]

well i took that one guys advice and i squatted till i threw up today man i felt like shit i had to stop after my third exercise came home and yakked all over the floor soo much.

[SuperBird]

well i took that one guys advice and i squatted till i threw up today man i felt like shit i had to stop after my third exercise came home and yakked all over the floor soo much.

ive never been able to work out so hard that i puke. never. but then again, i dont puke easy. at all. i read that ARNOLD did it all the time. stay away from your legs for a week now. let them get full repair. if you thrashed em like that. once you get mass going, you can back off that kind of intensity, but if you can make a way of life out of it then keep rockin em like that.

[darkcrayz]

you have to be careful puking every workout that, its a sign you over extended your body; which is fine except when you do it repeatedly. that is when you over train and stop making progress.