Change to leg training routine

Hi Guys,

Thanks for reading. I've changed my leg strengthening routine for a few reasons.

1. Variety is good, you need to pose different stimulus to your muscles to keep challenging them and thus keep getting stronger. I usually find altering my program every 4-6 weeks is a good mix of enough time to allow progression of resistance on an exercise, and you don't get bored doing the same exercises again and again for years on end.

2.Plus I evaluated what muscles I needed to strengthen, in what ranges of motion and decided Squats and Deadlifts while awesome exercises, probably weren't the optimal choices for me at this stage. I've changed Squats to Weighted Lunges and Dead-lifts to Stiff Legged dead-lifts. So still trying to keep basic compound resistance exercises and one Quad dominant(lunge)  and one Hip dominant (Stiff leg deadlift) movement.

The rationale for shifting squats to lunges was I wanted to do an exercise that also helped strengthen my hip flexors, while also strengthening my quads. I also find my stabilizers get a much better workout with lunges than squats. As I am more interested in functional strength and not just building bigger quads, I think I will get better results at this time with lunges....at least until my hip flexor is strengthened and back to 100%.

I switched Deadlifts to the Stiff Legged version because in a  mechanical sense it is placing demands that are closer to kicking than regular deadlifts. In kicking, your supporting leg is usually straight (or very close to it) and your hamstring is activated as a stabilizer in that position.

The rest of the workout will remain the same:

1. Incline weighted leg raises (I plan to progress to hanging soon)
2. An isolated hip flexor raise of the end of a bench that I got from the following youtube video. (I thought I had posted this before.....)



3. Calf Raises
4. Hamstring Pulldowns
5. Adductor Pulldowns
6. I've also added weighted slow turning kicks like from this video


Slow Kicks Help video from TKD_Andy on Vimeo.

Not sure who TKD_Andy is, I think he used to post on the old trickstutorial before the forum was discontinued, but thanks for the video. So I'm doing similar just with adjustable ankle weights on the kicking leg.

Then isometric stretches after that.

Fun Fun