The ONLY 2 Quad Exercises You Need (NO, SERIOUSLY!)

What would you say if I told you there were only 2 quad exercises you need to do in order to get a bigger legs with a full quad sweep? In this video, I am going to show you the two quads exercises that should make up the bare minimum of your leg workouts. Not only are these two exercises for quads g

In a sea of different quad exercises, you would think it would be impossible for me to pick just two for you to get the gains that you’re looking for, but it’s not. As a matter of fact, I can do it with just four things. This drawing, physics, my muscle marker, and the squat. Let me show you. When it comes to developing the quads, it’s not just the exercise, but most importantly, how you position your body during the exercise.

So, if you take a traditional squat in this low bar position, you can see that the bar is behind your midfoot. If you want to maintain your balance and support during the exercise, you’re going to have to lean your torso forward in order to put that bar directly over the center of your foot. That being said, if you were to perform a front squat with the bar positioned in front of your body, this lean forward ain’t going to cut it. You’re going to fall forward. So, what you want to do is position your torso upright.

The position makes a huge difference. And that’s where the physics come in because the position of that bar in relation to the two moving joints in this lift, the hips and the knees, is going to determine what muscles are actually doing the work. In the bottom of that low bar back squat, you can see that the distance between that vertical line from the bar going straight down through your midfoot and the hips is pretty far. The increased length here is actually going to make the glutes and the hamstrings do the majority of the work. If you go back to the front squat, you put that bar in front of you.

What happens here? Because of the more upright torso, that distance between the hips and the bar is shortened. And now the distance between the knee here and the bar is increased. So what that does is now make the quads do more of the work. Now I know what you’re saying, but I can’t get into position to do a front squat comfortably.

And a lot of that has to do with the extreme amount of mobility that’s required at the wrist in order to do this exercise properly and maintain that high elbow position throughout. But we don’t have to do that because there’s an alternative setup. You can do the crossarm grip like this. And a lot of people will prefer this. But I will tell you if you have any type of shoulder discomfort, raising your arms up into this internally rotated position could cause some of that discomfort to come back during an exercise you don’t need it on.

Also, because the bar is held one arm higher than the other, you might get a little bit of unevenness to the bar out of this position. So, we can do something different. We can go back to that rack position, but we can actually include some straps. And what these straps do is just by hanging them from the bar and wrapping them around your wrist here, you’re allowed to get up into this position there, now with a neutral wrist position, all that extreme extension that was required before is not going to be needed here so you can focus on doing the exercise properly. If you don’t have straps and you’re looking for one last way to do this and make it feel really, really good, then what you want to do is take your thumbs, put them right towards your throat with your hands facing each other.

From this position, your thumbs are acting like support hooks. You drive your chest up nice and high to dig the bar in comfortably. And from here now, you can do the exercise without having to think. So, this exercise, the front squat, is absolutely one you’re going to want to focus on. But there’s still one more.

And that second exercise is one that you probably don’t do. You forgot intentionally cuz it sucks. But it is one of the most important and it belongs in your only two exercises if you really want to hammer your quads. And we’re talking about a Bulgarian split squat done with dumbbells and a bench. But not just any Bulgarian split squat.

As always, the position of your body determines what’s doing the work. So, if you wanted to hammer those quads, just like in the front squat, that torso has to be extremely upright. And what happens is the knee, when the torso goes upright, goes more forward. That forward displacement of the knee is going to make those quads work even harder. So, when you grab the dumbbells out of this position here, you go straight up.

Your only focus should be on keeping your chest as high as possible up and down. The chest stays out. And even as you start to fatigue, the dumbbell weight might want to cause you to round out. Every little bit that you round forward is going to take away the work that the quads are doing and shift it to the posterior chain to the point where if I was already leaned this way, what has it done? It’s taken away so much of the knee flexion angle.

If I were to then reestablish that vertical position here, that knee now becomes much more flexed. And again, the quad does all the work. If you want to make this even harder, now you can prolong your time in the bottom position. And we call this the one and a half Bulgarian split squat. So you go all the way down, up halfway, down again, and up.

All the way down, up halfway. Don’t go too fast, Jesse. He’s doing it automatically. You want to slow this down if you want to really, really get the benefits of the exercise. Up, halfway down, come back up again, and all the way up.

If you want to know how to set your foot up on the bench the proper way, because most people screw that up, watch this video that I have here on how to do a Bulgarian split squat. And also, if you want more than the only two series, you can find it right here. the only two ab exercises. All right, guys. Click subscribe and follow.

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