Your quadriceps (also known as your quads) are the most aesthetic and most important part of your leg muscles as they provide LOTS of strength as well as them being extremely good looking muscles to have.
There are 100s of exercises out there that will target the quad muscles but here are the 3 exercises that I think are the best for getting good quad activation for your legs. These exercises are a mix between compound and isolation exercises.
I recommend that you have at 1 quad based exercise in your leg days. Without further ado, let's dive into the 3 best exercises that will effectively target your quads.
1. Bulgarian Split Squats
Bulgarian split squats are probably the most intense and one of the most beneficial exercises to work the legs. It requires dumbbells and it is a compound exercise as it targets multiple joints as well as muscles. It is a great exercise that requires the legs to be put under some serious pressure.
How To Do It?
It is a pretty easy exercise that requires some balance in your legs.
Get 2 dumbbells (or do free weight if you can't add any extra weight) and a flat bench to start off with.
Hold the dumbbells in your hands (if applicable) and put the top side of one of your feet on the bench and face away from the bench.
Then squat down on that one leg until you reach good depth and keep repeating these reps, 1 set is when you do the same amount of reps for both legs.
Hypertrophy
In order to build muscle with this exercise, make sure that you are always doing more weight or more reps than you were doing last time. This is called hypertrophy and it is the process of tearing the muscle down with microtears in the muscle fibers and then rebuilding those muscles bigger and stronger.
2. Hack Squat (Quad Based Version)
The hack squat is an exercise that requires you to use a hack squat machine in order for you to do the exercise. This exercise is similar to the classic barbell squat but it provides more stability and is easier on your neck and lower back. This version of the hack squat is going to put great emphasis on your quads.
How To Do it?
Simple go to the hack squat machine and put weight on the machine, do some weight that you can do for around 10-15 reps as doing a lot of high reps for this exercise is going to help you a lot. Then position your feet at the bottom of the foot placement area, this will put emphasis on the quads. Then start doing a normal hack squat in the altered position. Make sure to go down slow and up with power.
Hypertrophy
In order to build muscle with this exercise, make sure that you are always doing more weight or more reps than you were doing last time. This is called hypertrophy and it is the process of tearing the muscle down with microtears in the muscle fibers and then rebuilding those muscles bigger and stronger.
3. Leg Extension
This is probably the most popular and common leg exercise for the quads. Leg extension is a machine exercise (isolation lift) that is a great way to get some great activation in your quads and to get a serious burn. This is my personal exercise as it really works my quads and allowed me to grow them a lot.
How To Do It?
Leg extension is a machine where there is a padded bar that is going to be pressing against your shin.
Simply sit down on the machine, set a good weight and extend your legs perpendicular to you.
Make sure that you can do a full extension to get maximum benefits from the exercise.
Once you fully extend your leg for 1 rep, try to slowly let the weight back down before doing another rep to get some time-under-tension activation.
Hypertrophy
In order to build muscle with this exercise, make sure that you are always doing more weight or more reps than you were doing last time. This is called hypertrophy and it is the process of tearing the muscle down with microtears in the muscle fibers and then rebuilding those muscles bigger and stronger.
Overall, these are the top 3 quad exercises that I can give you from personal experience and expert opinion. You should definitely use these in your next leg day to make sure you get a serious quad pump and so you can have stronger, bigger and aesthetic legs. I hope I was able to help you today, until next time.
Thanks for reading!
Just a young man trying to bring fitness to the world!
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