The title alone is probably going to put a lot of people off. Training legs alone is enough to put a few painful thoughts into people’s heads. Yet alone training them hard enough that you add slabs of muscle onto them.
My legs are a pretty good size now, but it wasn’t always that way. I played football competitively for years when I was younger, and I was athletically built. You could see all the definition of my muscles, but I wasn’t big. My legs definitely weren’t. It wasn’t until I got into training in the gym and reading about bodybuilding that I started to learn about the importance of a balanced physique and how big, thick legs played such an important role in achieving that. I learned at a young age (maybe around 17 or 18) that it wasn’t impressive, to me anyway, to walk around with huge shoulders and arms, but look like you were going to topple over at any minute due to lacking leg development.
I quickly came to terms with the fact that I needed big legs and I was going to have to work damn hard to get them being 6 foot tall. You see, 27-inch legs on someone 5 foot 10 are going to look a lot bigger than on someone who is 6 foot with 27-inch legs.
After lots of reading, there was one program that stood out to me – Smolov.
It worked.
Its created by Russians and is a specialised squat routine. It's actually designed to increase your squat believe it or not. However, one of the side effects is insane muscle growth on the legs. I was a bit sceptical of this, as a lot of programs claim the same thing. But after even more research, the one thing I kept seeing was to expect huge gains in the legs. What did I have to lose?
Now, I should mention if you can’t squat close to or over 300lbs then you probably shouldn’t do this program. You will be better off building your squat strength first and re visiting it. The other thing I should tell you that this is one of the hardest programs I have ever done. Ever.
I suppose what you really want to hear though is that you will build muscle on this program. You will probably also lose some fat. Squatting up to 4 times a week and being in a calorie surplus just seems to send your body into over anabolic overdrive.
Now your excited, I’ll tell you what Smolov looks like. It will be a brief overview of the program, so if you decide to take the plunge, you will have to go and do a little bit more research on it yourself.
The program is split into 13 weeks. Which is a relatively short amount of time for the rewards you are going to get back. The 13 weeks are split into 4 different training blocks;
Weeks 1-2 – A little bit of an introduction to the program, prepping your legs for the work ahead. Week 1 you will squat 3 days in a row working up to heavy singles and week 2 you will squat every other day.
Weeks 3-6 – Known as the ‘base cycle’, you will be squatting 4 x a week for 3 weeks. Yes, you read that right. Its split into 4 sets of 9, 5 sets of 7, 7 sets of 5 and 10 sets of 3. The last week is a rest where you will only squat once in an attempt to break your PB.
Weeks 7-8 – The ‘switching cycle’. A welcomed 2-week deload to give your body and mind a rest.
Weeks 9-13 – The ‘intensity cycle’. Here you will be squatting 3 x a week with between 80-90% of your 1RM for 4 weeks. Week 5 you will attempt to break your PB.
That’s it in a nutshell.
A few things I would recommend on this program are;
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Eat in a calorie surplus. At least 500 calories more than maintenance every day. You could probably get away with more.
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Sleep like a king. Make sure you get quality sleep every night, or you just won't feel like squatting again.
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Take extra time to foam roll and stretch.
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Reduce upper body training to once a week.
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Save some money for new jeans.
Stick to the plan and apply the above points and in 13 weeks there is no reason why you won't be walking around with a new set of wheels and a squat PB to go with them.
