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Stop wasting time with little exercises.To build massive legs, all you need is the barbell. This single piece of equipment allows you to do the best leg exercises for total lower body development.
Even better, you don’t need dozens of exercises to choose from. You just need the best 7 leg exercises and we have them listed below.
The advantage of barbell exercises really comes down to one main point - heavier loads. Barbell leg exercises generally consist of big, compound lifts that can be performed with heavy weights.
Extra loads means;
With that said, here are some reasons why we love training the lower body with the barbell.
Whether your goal is performance, strength, fat loss, or muscle mass, the barbell will get you there the fastest. More strength = more muscle building potential, and vice versa, and maintaining muscle mass and doing heavy lifts = higher calorie burn and thus easier fat loss.
All that said, the barbell is more of an advanced training tool. Beginners can use it, but they should go light to learn proper movement mechanics before adding load. From there, use progressive overload, incrementally going heavier over time.
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Without further ado, here are the 7 best barbell leg exercises to add to your lifting selection. Note: You will need a squat rack for many of these exercises, especially if you go heavy.
Want bigger thighs? Then you need the barbell back squat, king of all the leg exercises. You can load this exercise up heavily because of the stability that the upper and lower back provide. It's important that you play around with rep ranges with back squats too.
Low reps with heavy weight is good, but lighter rep squats can cause the body to produce growth hormones to help increase your size and strength too.² This is a great exercise to include in any leg workout, including this legs and shoulder routine.
Muscles emphasized: Quads, Glutes, Hamstrings
How to do the Barbell Back Squat:
Best rep ranges: 4-8, 8-12, and 12-20
Related: High Bar vs Low Bar Back Squat
While the barbell is the king of leg exercises, the barbell deadlift is the king of exercises.
The deadlift is a monster of a movement, allowing a huge load to be placed on every muscle in your body, including your legs. Specifically, the deadlift is going to target your posterior leg muscles, your glutes and hamstrings. However, there’s also heavy quad involvement, especially at lift off.
When we program the deadlift and squat, we will usually program them as the primary movement for two different training sessions.
For load and reps, we like using lower reps. High reps, even if load is lower, can be fatiguing and result in poor form. Therefore, we rarely do more than 6 reps.
How to do the Barbell Back Squat:
If barbell back squats are the king of the leg exercises, the front squats are the queen and rule reign over your quads.
You’ll use less load due to the front rack position, but it has a few advantages to make up.
Front squats can be very challenging when you first start, this is one reason you don’t see many people do them. Trust us, put in the work and you’ll see a difference.
Muscles emphasized: Quads
How to do the Barbell Front Squat:
Best rep range: 4-12
Related: 3 Types of Front Squat Grips
The barbell hip thrust is one of the best exercises to isolate the glutes hard and heavy.
Hip thrusts are unique as they’re one of the heaviest movements you can perform yet are actually a single-joint exercise. It just so happens that the joint is the hip, which is powered by the strongest muscle in the human body, the glutes.
Another unique factor is it’s the only exercise where the load is placed directly on the joint. This direct force is what allows such a powerful movement.
While the glutes are the main focus, it will also hit the hamstrings.
Muscles emphasized: Glutes, Hamstrings
How to do the Barbell Hip Thrust:
Note: The wider your foot positioning, the more glute activation.
Best rep range: 6-15
Related: Hip Thrust Exercise Guide
Split squats reduce muscle imbalance between sides, focus on your quads and glutes, and lead to better muscle development between sides. Do they suck? Yes, but they are good for you.
If you were to choose one exercise to improve your barbell squat and deadlift split squat would be it. The barbell split squat allows you to load this movement heavier to improve your leg drive for squats and deadlifts.
Muscle emphasized: Quads, Glutes
How to do the Barbell Split Squat:
Best rep range: 8-12
RDLs differ from the conventional deadlift as they start in the standing position. This means you begin the movement by letting the barbell down which places emphasis on the eccentric portion of the movement.
Further, there’s more emphasis on hip flexion/extension with less knee flexion/extension. This helps target the glutes and hamstrings to a greater degree while also increasing time under tension. Collectively, Romanian deadlifts provide awesome posterior development.
Muscles emphasized: Hamstring, Glutes
How to do the Romanian Deadlift:
Best rep range: 6-12
Related: Romanian Deadlift Exercise Guide
Reverse lunges are probably the easiest of all the lunge variations because stepping back makes it a hip-dominant exercise, and this puts less stress on your knees than other lunge variations.
A great reverse lunge variation is the front racked reverse lunges. You set up as you would for a front squat and then perform a reverse lunge. This will help decrease muscle imbalances, increase injury resilience, and builds anterior core strength.
Muscles Emphasized: Quads, Hamstrings, Glutes, Core
How to Do the Front Racked Barbell Reverse Lunge:
Best rep range: 8-12
Before you start lifting heavy with your working sets, you need to prep your legs and activate your legs muscle fibers. To this, you need to perform some ramp-up sets.
Ramp-up sets help grease the groove and can also help you judge how you’re feeling that day. This is very convenient for those who use any form of autoregulation such as RPE. As you’re warming up, you can feel if weight is feeling heavier than usual, or lighter, and adjust accordingly.
Use ramp up sets for the main lifts in your workouts, after that your muscles will be warm and you won't need to use such an extensive ramp up.
Here’s an example using barbell back squats:
While we gave you the barbell exercises, you still need to know how to program them. Here are the guidelines you need to follow.
Barbell exercises that train the most muscle and require the most energy should always come first in training. For example, barbell back squats and deadlifts are generally the first exercise of the session.
When you’re fresh you’re more likely to lift with good form and use more weight. When performing barbell exercises back-to-back use your best judgment on what comes first.
As you descend, you should also alternate exercises based on the targeted leg muscles. With the barbell leg exercises above, you’re going to train your entire lower body with each exercise.
However, some are geared towards the quadriceps while others are geared towards the posterior. For example;
Also, try to avoid putting two exercises together that put too much shear and compressive load on the spine.
Muscle and strength are built in a variety of set and rep ranges.³ However, certain loads and reps are optimal depending on your goal.
When we perform barbell leg exercises, we will generally keep the reps below 10. Further, we keep 8-10 reps for the “smaller” barbell exercises such as the RDL
We feel other, more specific exercises are better for using higher reps.
We really like training the legs twice a week. For one. This frequency has been found to be optimal for most trainees.⁴
Secondly, we find that training the squat and deadlift on the same day can be brutal. Of course you can, and people do, but beginners (and many intermediate lifters) do better splitting them up. Therefore, one session starts with squats and then starts the other session with deadlifts.
If you have questions about barbell leg exercises and workouts, leave a comment below!
Exercise: |
Sets: |
Reps: |
Rest Between Sets: |
Back Squat |
5 |
3-6 |
2-3 mins |
Hip Thrusts |
3 |
6-8 |
1-2 mins |
Front Rack Reverse Lunge |
3 |
8-10 |
1-2 mins |
RDL |
3 |
8-10 |
90 seconds |
BEST STRENGTH PROGRAM
Prepare to maximize your strength with our exclusive 13-week strength training program. 3, 4, and 5 day per week programming options.
More Leg Training Resources:
More Barbell Exercise Resources:
References
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