HELP...I Hate Legs!

[zoman68]

I am trying to come up with a basic beginners leg workout that i can get started on. I focus so much on my upper body that I leave little time for legs. I've been reading everyone's profile and looking at the awesome pictures that show leg development, unfortunately, softball and other sports have been the priority when it comes to me training legs because having sore legs is not much fun.

I would like to get started this weekend (tomorrow) and would like any suggestions for a beginners routine. Any suggestions?

Any articles or pictures you could share to detail leg development would be nice as well! Thanks! -Lorenzo

[staven]

I too used to hate working out the legs. I would quit working out just the mirror muscles. I mountain bike so I know how bad it sucks to be involved in a sport when your muscles are sore, ( imagine a three hour continuous mountain bike ride the day after squats) I used to have legs that looked like toothpicks. What I did that helped was.
1. If you mainly play softball on weekends, then workout legs after softball, the legs are already pre-fatigued and it will give you plenty of time to recover by the next weekend.

2. Squat heavy, at first I hated it but when you start to quickly see results you will learn to love them.

3. When you work out your legs and begin to see your strength, speed jump height, etc. increase this will motivate you.

Good luck

[mikelom]

As someone on this forum once said: "the best leg exercises have the word squat in them". Squat after soft ball so you will have time to recover before the next game. I'm thinking that soreness from squats is completely different than the soreness from softball.

[user23960508710788]

What's more important, your sports, strength, hypertrophy? You can't really have it all, not that there's a right or wrong answer but training legs is very demanding and doing so after playing a softball game is not going to yield the best results... a heavy set of squats takes a lot of energy out of you, if you are already worn out there's no way you'll be near your best.

Here's my current leg workout, just go give you something you can tweak around:
Back squats: 4 sets. very heavy, low rep.
Leg Extensions: 4 sets. very light, high rep.
Front Squats: 4 sets. moderate weight and reps.
Leg Curls: 5 sets. very heavy, low rep.
Romanian Deadlifts: 5 sets. moderate weight, moderate reps.
Donkey single-legged calf raises: 4 sets. Very heavy, very high rep.

[pjluvsae]

When i do my leg workout i like to pre- fatigue the quads with leg extensions. Specifically 10-10-2-20's. Yeah like the long distance commercial.
Example

70lbs 10 reps
150 10 reps
whole stack 2 reps
50lbs 20 reps

this is all done straight through with no rest between weights other than to switch the weight.

It really burns my quads, Then off to squat!!!

[zoman68]

Thanks, those are some good tips...going heavy with squats and then being able to see results i'm sure will help motivate me to go futher. I appreciate your comments.

[zoman68]

I agree and I will do squats after softball since my legs are going to already be sore anyway.

[zoman68]

Thanks for all the comments, it all makes sense and i'm looking forward to trying some of these things out. Thanks!