Building leg growth has been a life long goal of mine. I don’t think a limit exists as they could always be bigger and thicker in my mind. Firstly, building muscle takes time. It can take months, even years to see significant progress. However, there are definitely a few things to help yourself along your journey to make it a bit easier.
Strength training is the best way to increase muscle mass and leg growth. You want to train your lower body a minimum of two times a week to stimulate the leg muscles and reap the benefits from your training.
Progressive Overload For Leg Growth
Progressive overload allows you to challenge certain muscle groups by changing up the weights, increasing the sets and reps, upping the frequency, and reducing the rest time. You don’t have to incorporate all these methods at once. However, these will definitely challenge you over time to build up muscle mass. It means that you need continuously push yourself a little harder each time that you are in the gym, so that your body is forced to grow. The best way to track your progress over time is to hop onto a programme that makes these adjustments for you. Another way is making the changes yourself, if you can keep yourself accountable.
When it comes to my programming for the gym, I prefer to train with a power builder approach. I go just as hard with my accessories as I do with my three big lifts. Recently, what I have done is increase the reps after 4 weeks of training. Then after 8 weeks of training, I’ll increase the sets to challenge myself a bit more. I only go up in weight for my accessories once I can do about 12-15 reps with controlled form.
Time Under Tension (TUT)
Time Under Tension (TUT) is the total amount of time that a muscle or muscle group is activated during a set. When you put your muscle under tension, it will tear during the workout. Then the muscle fibres will repair themselves through nutrition and recovery. This will help you build muscle and lift heavier weights.
TUT is something that I have been actively conscious in doing in the last nine months to build muscular endurance. I believe that this method is slept on and underutilised in strength training. I think it’s because there is so much focus on increasing weight, which is a good thing, but you should be able to control the weight through pauses and tempo instead of relying on momentum.
If you want to incorporate TUT practices in your training, follow these three tips:
- Slow down your reps: this will make your reps and sets last longer. It will encourage muscle fatigue so make sure that you are using a weight that is heavier, but lighter than your 1 rep max (1RM).
- Increase the number of reps: increasing the reps and sets for any exercise will not only increase the time under tension but also, will increase your training volume.
- Add more exercises to target the muscle groups: For example, if your goal is to build your quads and you are only doing back squats and leg press. Try adding leg extensions to isolate the quads and this will add additional stress onto that muscle group.
Lift Heavier
This tip goes without saying, you’ve got to be lifting heavier to make significant changes to your leg growth. Those of you who have been with me from the beginning know that we have no plans to stay the same here. It’s all about the growth. If you are new here, drop the baby weights and go a little heavier. If you are not struggling to finish that those last two reps, time to go a little bit heavier.
Lifting heavier weights sums up all the tips together because they all push you to challenge your body over time and add gradual stress to build your desired leg growth and increase them in size. I know that you can do it.
Bonus Tip For Leg Growth
I did say three tips in the title but I’m not a huge fan of odd numbers like that. Here is a bonus tip for leg growth.
Increase your leg workout frequency. When it comes to strength and size, frequency is king. If you want to build a certain muscle group, you need to train it more than once or sometimes twice a week. Your legs count for over half of the body’s muscle so train it with that mentality to help them grow.
Before I got into powerlifting, I trained legs including the accessories twice a week. Now I train legs three times a week and I have seen significant strength gains and aesthetic gains by following this approach. I would recommend starting with twice a week first. If you think you can add an additional day, try it out and see how it works for you.
Final Thoughts
Be patient with your leg growth! Sometimes building muscle on your legs can be frustrating, especially when you are doing all the work. The body prefers to homeostasis (staying the same) and you may not see the products of your work until 3 months or 6 months in. I’m telling you not to give up. Keep on training. Keep challenging yourself with these tips and when you least expect it, you will see the progress.
I hope that this has given you the confidence to get out there and continue building muscle and the body of your dreams. Make sure to hit that subscribe button to join the community and never miss out on a post. Find me on Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok for more powerlifting and wellness content.
Until next time,
Folakemi
