My coach had me do the following four lifts:
-squat
-romanian deadlifts (or stiff leg deadlifts)
-leg extensions
-leg curls
Squats went well enough. I've been experimenting with varying my form (deep squats vs regular squats) and I've found that deeper squats seem to give me a better pump and I'm much more sore afterwards. Will the same work for you? Maybe, maybe not. There's an endless debate on what types of squats are the best (partial/parallel/deep). I'll get into why partial squats are generally a bad idea in a later post because today I want to talk about the four different ways to label a lift.
My training had me start at a warm up and work towards 10 reps for stiff leg deadlifts. I hit that fairly quickly and wanted to go a little farther. I hadn't done deads in a while and I was feeling pretty pumped up. Before I knew it I hit 305lbs for 5 reps. I felt amazing! ...and then I remembered that up next were the machine exercises. Ugh.
I remember hearing once that "anyone who thinks extensions and curls is a complete leg day is stupid", and you know, that's pretty accurate. Don't get me wrong- machines are great. In fact, the guy in the background on the Tumblr site is Arthur Jones, inventor of the Nautilus Machine, good friend to Mike Mentzer, weight training pioneer, and all around genius. The problem is they're not good enough. To really make your legs grow you need to use free weights.
While there are millions of different ways to work the body we only really have about four types of lifting movements. These can be labeled as restricted and unrestricted, linear and non-linear.
Think of a restricted movement as something that, well, restricts your movement. It's a lift that keeps you on one set path. There's no need to stabilize. These are your machines and cable stations. Unrestricted is the exact opposite- you're not stuck. These are your free weights. You can twist your wrist while you curl- you can move your shoulder while you do Arnold presses. These are exercises that don't restrict your movement.
Linear and non-linear are just like they sound: they depend on a line. Pull ups? Linear. You move up and down. Bench press? Linear. Same idea. Bicep curls? Nope. You have angular movement around a joint, so it's not linear. Here are some examples of the four
Unrestricted Linear
-squat, bench, dead lift, barbell shoulder press, pull ups
Unrestricted Non-Linear
-dumbbell curls, tricep extensions with dumbbells, Arnold presses, lunges, pull overs with dubbells
Restricted Linear
-Machine presses, machine lat pull downs, cable pull downs, leg press, hack squat
Restricted Non-Linear
-Leg curls, leg extensions, nautilus curls, nautilus tricep extensions
By now you might be thinking "Great, but how does this help me?" Here's the answer:
To maximize muscle growth, try to stay unrestricted and linear as possible.
Unrestricted linear movements are what you'd label the big three (squat, deadlift, bench press) as. Remember how dense Franco Columbu was? He competed as a power lifter. Arnold would do dead lift competitions. Everyone who truly grew did true squats. Unrestricted linear lets your body grow strong while using stabilizers. Strength and size go hand in hand.
While restricted linear and restricted non-linear exercises are important, and I'll talk about them in future posts, they don't allow you to use those little stabilizing muscles that unrestricted movements do. They also limit your weight, and are often ergonomically unique. I'm hard pressed to find two gyms in two cities with the exact same leg curl machine. And you know what- that makes it hard to keep track. We should all have lifting diaries, and if you squatted 135lbs for 10 reps last week you should be able to do that again this week. 120lbs on the leg curl on a Cybex machine might very well be different from 120lbs on the leg curl on a Hammer Strength station.
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