An ex football player at my gym told me that squats are responsible for at least 80% of his upper body gains. Is this true? Any studies?
I guess my question is HOW important is working out your lower body for upper body gains? I do legs every other week, not at high intensity just to keep them from shrinking. Thinking about changing that.
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02-15-2009, 03:57 PM #1
Importance of working out legs (question)
Buyakasha
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02-15-2009, 04:28 PM #2
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02-15-2009, 04:44 PM #3
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02-15-2009, 06:03 PM #4
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+1 to both of the responses above-squats/deadlifts are going to shoot your T levels through the roof, which helps to build more overall body muscle, plus your body WANTS to grow proportionately, so in a sense, make your legs grow, and you'll make your arms want to grow
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02-15-2009, 07:32 PM #5
you should learn to enjoy training legs, unlike most people I trained my legs from the beggining and Im glad, imagine going to the beach having a huge upper body and chicken legs. You would look very goofy and unsymetrical, I remember seeing a guy whos arms were bigger than his thighs he looked so stupid everyone was laughing at him. Dont be lazy training legs is hard, but it is worth it trust me.
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02-15-2009, 10:52 PM #6
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02-16-2009, 01:18 AM #7
Train your legs but don't be under any illusions that squats and other leg exercises are going to make your torso massive. You need to train your back, chest, delts and arms if you want them to grow.
Let me put it another way. If you train your upper body but not your lower body, your upper body would still grow. Evidence? Look at the physiques of 90% of teenage boys who go to gyms. Big chest and arms, no legs. Also look at wheelchair bodybuilders.
As for lower body exercises releasing testosterone/growth hormone. Growth hormone, probably in larger quantities, is produced by the body when sleeping. It is also produced when fasting. Food for thought ;-)"I not only don't use gloves, I file the skin off my palms before each workout. I also wrap double sided tape about the bar, sprinkle broken glass on it, dip it in acid, then wrap it in razor wire. I also plug the bar into an outlet, and stand in a bucket of water." - Defiant1
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02-16-2009, 01:33 AM #8
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02-16-2009, 01:39 AM #9
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02-16-2009, 02:08 AM #10
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02-16-2009, 10:01 PM #11
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02-16-2009, 10:11 PM #12
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02-16-2009, 10:29 PM #13
Hey now, don't take what I'm saying the wrong way... I'm not making any argument. I'm just stating that there is no evidence for sustained hormone releases from compound exercises that I've seen and the studies I have read state the opposite, so when someone states broadly that this effect is produced its really going unsupported. I'm actually kind of tempted to ask Mark about this topic on Strengthmill, because homeostasis and hormonal response is a topic I'm really interested in and something I would like to take courses in over the next few years.
Whether compounds exhibit a hormonal response or not, squats do stimulate a significant amount of smooth muscle tissue. From the
'tear and build back up' view of muscle adaptation, this explains their inclusion of squats into their programs, of which I personally subscribe to.
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02-22-2009, 12:29 AM #14
Thanks for the input.
Adding size to my legs isn't really a priority, I have naturally huge legs in the first place due to genetics, to the point of having a disproportionately big lower body. But I'll train legs at least once a week from now on, at least enough to release whatever stuff it releases. Deadlifts are my favorite exercise overall, but squats are just **** for me.
If anyone has links to any studies, please post them.Buyakasha
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02-22-2009, 12:40 AM #15
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02-22-2009, 12:58 AM #16
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10-02-2013, 06:40 AM #17
legs question
so anyone who really know to give a straight forward and true reply / answer if training out your legs your upper body will benefit to grow up and why so we all the armatures we understand how it works ?
is it bcause of Testosrerone releases more in the body or bloode preausre ?
thank you
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10-02-2013, 07:44 AM #18
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10-02-2013, 08:05 AM #19No brain, no gain.
"The fitness and nutrition world is a breeding ground for obsessive-compulsive behavior. The irony is that many of the things people worry about have no impact on results either way, and therefore aren't worth an ounce of concern."--Alan Aragon
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10-02-2013, 05:03 PM #20
Jason Blaha recently posted a video on how rediculous it is to claim that squats increase your arm size by any noticeable amount. He talked about one study that claimed that they did, but pointed out that the participants in the study got fatter, and obviously getting fatter is going to increase your arm "size". He also talked about how studies seem to show that there's no non-temporary change in testosterone levels.
Unfortunately I couldn't find the video in a quick search.
But it's completely absurd to tell anyone that 80% of their arm gains are from squats. Just look at the results of the original Starting Strength program, which had you doing squat/deadlift or squat/power clean, but only 1 arm exercise - bench press or overhead press - per time. It was a common complaint on that that arms didn't get bigger anywhere nearly proportionally to the lower body and torso. Now imagine you take out the arms...
"squats will make your arms get bigger" sounds like it's just some mantra that coaches told their football players who only really wanted to spend their time on upper body, but needed to do a leg workout to. Like 'this will go on your permanent record!' or 'if you're bad, santa clause won't bring you any gifts'.
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04-19-2014, 08:58 PM #21
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04-20-2014, 12:03 AM #22
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02-26-2015, 07:01 AM #23
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I was told by the guy who got me into working out is that the bigger your legs get the bigger you can make your arms because the body likes symmetry. He never said a percentage, he just told me I need to have a leg day. He told me working all the muscles will only be beneficial. He didn't tell me about any hormones or stuff, just explained that overall working the lower body was just as important as working the upper.
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02-26-2015, 07:36 AM #24
Old post but I'll play around. It sounds like most of what your friend said is true about working everything, but I doubt the body symmetry theory. There are plenty of examples where a person's lower and upper body are way out of proportion. Your muscles respond to stresses put on those muscles, that's it.
IronWill really summed it up almost 2 years ago. You work your legs to build your legs, you work your upper body to build your upper body.
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08-24-2015, 01:05 PM #25
first of all if you go past 45 min in the gym your test goes down cortisol goes up its a sientific fact and bigger arms buy trainning legs is a load of **** the more muscle you work the more its hard on your body to recover i got gains when i stopped doing legs because i have big legs naturaly and as far as the test increase lol you would need like a 200 % increase to build muscle a 2% increase will do **** you see alot of ppl whit skinny legs and huge arms so
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08-24-2015, 01:14 PM #26
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Acute hormone fluctuations mean nothing. Cortisol is doing what it's supposed to be doing, it's not the enemy. You can exercise for more than 45 minutes without a problem for exactly the same reason why squatting doesn't build biceps.
If you can't build upper body without dropping leg training then your programming, conditioning and/or diet is lacking.
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08-24-2015, 09:53 PM #27
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08-25-2015, 05:01 AM #28
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08-25-2015, 06:26 AM #29
That's complete horse**** OP, you gotta use common sense here.
Squats clearly don't work any upper body muscles, so that leaves this idea of some kind of testosterone boost from squatting. Sure it's certainly possible that you could get an increase in testosterone from intense lifting, but is it going to be enough to make a significant difference in your upper body mass? Probably not....
And no, your body does not auto-regulate its proportions, this is completely laughable. Your body only develops muscle when it absolutely has to, barring genetics. Look at high level squatters and olympic lifters, those which don't focus much at all on upper body. They have huge strong legs and squats and very unimpressive upper body mass.
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08-25-2015, 09:20 AM #30
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