Day 1: Legs
That's right, we are kicking the cycle off with legs. I like starting with legs that way the hatred you feel from the pain in your lower body will fuel the rest of your week. Generally I start all my leg work with a hamstring curl, this is to get my knees nice and warm so they are ready for a hard squat session. This is hamstring ISOLATION, leave the lower back out of it. From there we will go into some type of barbell squat. Any type will do, just load a barbell and squat with it. I’m partial to the basics: front squats or back squats. Then we are doing some form of supplemental lower body pushing. Leg pressing or some machine based squat (like hack squats or belt squats) are the best choices here, try and stay away from barbell movements. If you have no access to these types of machines then single leg work like lunges or step ups would work just fine. Next we are going back to the posterior chain: stiff leg deadlifts, glute/ham raises, hip thrust, or good mornings are my favorite choices here. You want to get a good loaded stretch in the hamstrings with this exercise. Finally, finish off with some quad isolation work. Leg Extensions are the gold standard when it comes to isolating the Quads but if you're in a black iron gym then something like sissy squats (not for sissies) would work just fine. It's all about the knee extension, whereas we started with knee flexion. The leg day looks like this:
Hamstring Isolation
Barbell Squat
Lower Press (Machine/Single Leg)
Posterior Chain
Quad Isolation
