Leg Strength Workout (JUST 2 EXERCISES!)
Build athletic, strong legs by training like an athlete here
What’s up guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX. COM. So today, let’s do something a little bit different. Let’s take you behind the scenes of one of my workouts and actually bring you inside my head.
It could actually be a pretty scary place to be, I promise you but if you’re in there you’ll also see what my mentality is when I’m attacking my workout. And I think that when you’re working out you should have a focus mentality on what you’re doing. Have a game plan. And for my Leg Workout today it’s actually pretty easy. While there might be a lot of thoughts up here, there’s not a lot of thoughts on what I’m doing.
I’m only doing two exercises, the Deadlift and the Bulgarian Split Squat. Two of my favorite. The Deadlift I’m looking at is more of a Posterior Chain Leg exercise. And again, I always feel it’s a Leg exercise because you’re pushing primarily off the ground and then finishing with your Glutes. And then of course my favorite Quad exercise, the one legged athletic, very athletic Bulgarian Split Squat.
So I’m going to take you through, I’m just going to talk my way through the Workout and give you the thoughts that were in my head at each step so that you might be able to grab something or grasp something from them, ok. So let’s start right here with the Deadlift. Ok so the first thing that you’ll notice is that I don’t have sneakers on and I’ve talked about in the past my flat feet, my flipper like flat feet. But in this case when doing the Deadlift I actually think it really helps me. Because you’re going to want to have as much feel of the ground as possible to execute the initial part of the lift in the Deadlift.
Remember this is a pushing exercise for the first third of the movement. And you’re basically doing a Standing Leg Press. So you want to be able to feel the ground, grab as much force out of that ground as you can and transfer it up through your body and that’s what I do. Now the second thing is before I even initiate a rep, I actually try to grease the groove. And I think it’s really important that you try to do this.
If you have any mental cues that you use in any of your Lifts to make you perform them more efficiently, then do them as a pre lift routine. And I do that here all the time with my lighter Lifts, especially as I’m just getting started in the Workout. So I think there’s two parts to the Deadlift. We’ve covered in another video, all about this. There’s a Hip Hinge until your hands are at the level of your knees and from there simply release your knees and let your body drop down to the ground, with maintaining that same amount of Hip Hinge.
The last thing I want you to notice is on these sub strength reps, I don’t go for a lot of reps because that’s wasting my time. And if your goal, as mine is in this workout, is to improve your strength, you should be trying to do higher quality reps with a lot of weight, as opposed to lifting and accumulating mass volume with lower weight. These 135 pound reps are far away from the productive reps that I’m going to need to be focusing on in this workout. Ok next I loaded up to 225 and again very very simple the goal here is the same. The goal is to groove the movement and then the goal is to keep these sub strength reps, these sub quality, not quality in terms of their performance but their intent along the lines of my goal, they’re not about strength so don’t do a lot of them.
There’s no need again, to accumulate volume here at these lower reps as this is not what you’re trying to shoot for. Then as I make my way up the chain now, sentimental Jeff comes out and I grab my Weider 44 pounders. That’s right these Weider plates are actually the ones that I first had, the very first set of Barbells and Dumbbells that I ever had. This was them and I actually still have them to this day. I think a lot of you guys out there watching can actually probably relate to that.
So I’m not actually doing 315 here, I’m cheating myself out 2 pounds but that’s ok for sentimentality, I’ll take it, that’s 313. And one more time guys, you’ll see that I know I can go higher than this. There’s no point in me trying to do 9, 10 reps here, not with the intent of trying to increase my strength and again that is the major focus for me in this workout is to try to increase my strength. So I’m going to need all the resources and energy I have when I get up to these higher weights in these next couple steps. Ok, now we’re getting to the point where it’s really starting to matter for me, now I am putting on 403.
Ok, so at 403 I’m getting closer to where I can kind of, max out of what I can handle and what I’m approaching and trying to handle in this workout. And for me, I’m trying to add one more plate to what you see here. But until then, now what I’m trying to do is now that I’ve got heavy weight in my hands, at least for me, remember heavy is relative. Heavy is only relative to you, your strength levels and the goal that you’re trying to achieve. And for me right now this is starting to feel heavy.
But what I’m going to do is, I’m not going to count. And I always advise you guys, Don’t Count. Even when you have a rep range in your mind if you’re trying to work in the 3 to 5 rep range, you know where that is and what weight’s going to put you there, but don’t necessarily count. Because if I count to 5 and I could do 6 then do 6. If I count to 5 and I’m trying to go for 5 and I only do 3 but I do 3 really high quality reps, don’t be so concerned about that.
The idea is, make them count without counting reps, does that make sense? That’s my mindset all the time, make them count without counting reps. Do that here on these sets here and you’re going to get much more out of them, I promise. Ok finally now we’re up to my goal which was 5 plates today and with those extra 2 Weider’s that I had there in that original 225 pound set, now I’m pushing myself up to, I believe it’s 491 as I’m a few short here of 495. But the idea here is guys, now I’m trying to see what I can get and again I’m looking for a few reps.
If I can get 2, 3 reps, I’m good. And as I approach the bar here, I want to make sure again, I reinforce that groove. I try to visualize it in my mind here before I even go for the rep. Now as I go for it, I’ve got to admit I’m not feeling all that great today. We’re actually getting ready to move here from my house.
I spent the whole day yesterday packing. My back was humming just a little bit. My knees obviously, if you guys have been following for a while, know that they’re pretty much trash. But it doesn’t stop me from attempting what I’m trying to do here. And as I go for it, I feel pretty strong, I get the first rep, I get the second rep.
I kind of feel like if I go for the third, I may not come back up and it may be kind of miserably, so what I do is I just drop it. See I’m not so obsessed guys here with trying to push myself to unrealistic levels if I don’t feel like I have them. For me today, it didn’t feel realistic for me to try to go for that third rep. And the repercussions of trying to do that, might have been pretty ugly, like I said. Ok next up, my favorite part of the workout here, now we’re going to shift the focus again from the posterior chain to the interior chain.
And here we’re doing the Bulgarian Split Squat. I love this exercise, I’ve talked about it many many times. It’s a very athletic move. We have a Single Leg movement and we have a Split Stance. And the Split Stance is going to help us sort of recreate and reenact that athletic position that we’re going to find ourselves in if we do anything athletic.
And if you’re not even an Athlete, let’s face it you’re still going to find yourself in this position daily, just walking, running or doing whatever else it is that you do, ok. So it is a very functional position but you’ve got to build strength here and strength is my