Lawrence Ballenger is an athlete from team bodybuilding.com who offers the complete package when it comes to lean and powerful muscle mass. In particular he is an athlete with eye-catching leg development which is all too often forgotten, even by pro athletes.
Fortunately Lawrence has shared his XXL leg workout so now anyone can benefit from this kind of leg power. This workout is great because it doesn’t focus too much on quads (as others have been known to do) but instead gives proper attention to hamstrings, glutes and calves to deliver the goods throughout the lower body.
Watch the Video Below to Check out this Workout:
Note: Lawrence likes to start with a warm up such as walking or cycling in order to get the blood heading to the legs.
Leg Extension
We’re starting out with one everyone should be familiar with: the leg extension. This uses the resistance machine in order to guide the leg through an extension movement and to get the quads working to begin with. This will pre-exhaust the quads, making sure that you engage your quads more during squats.
Barbell Squat
With a barbell across your shoulder you’re now going to squat. Try to drive through the movement with your hamstrings now that you’ve warn out the quads.
Superset: Single Leg Press + Leg Press
The leg press is a squat performed with the use of a resistance machine. This makes it great for getting in more repetitions once your legs are already good and tired from squats. By moving from unilateral movements straight to a ‘regular’ leg press you can effectively get a great drop set and this is a brilliant way to push past failure.
Superset: Triple-Drop Smith Machine Squat + Standing Calf Raise
A smith machine guides you through the squatting movement allowing you to get a bit more adventurous with your squats. Lawrence uses a drop set with three different weights in order to train past failure and follows immediately with standing calf raises using the smith machine. He trains using slightly different angles such as leaning slightly on the bar itself.
Superset: Seated Leg Curl + Seated Calf Raise
Now your hamstrings are already tired you’re going to finish them off with a seated leg curl – the bicep curl of the legs. Follow up with back-to-back seated calf raises in order to keep the burn on in the calves as well.
Walking Lunge
To finish you’re going to do walking lunges – lunging forward through each step to walk around the gym. You can do this with extra weight or with no extra weight. At this point your legs should be feeling like jelly, and walking through like this will absolutely finish off your legs and use up every last drop (Lawrence doesn’t use any extra weight as he says he doesn’t need it at this point!).
After all this, just walking normally will probably be enough to get your legs really burning. Mind those stairs on the way out! That’s how you know you’ve done a great legs session…
