Friday, September 29, 2017

Leg Press Has Become The Center of My Training; And I'm Going to Try Isolation Work for Calves

In an amusing twist I am going supplementing my squat and deadlift work with some form of leg press on every day that I squat and deadlift.

On the Heavy Squat Day (with belt, wraps, and heavy partials), I will be doing bilateral, high volume leg press with squat shoes with a squat stance.

On the Light Squat Day (just unequipped paused back squat), I will be doing unilateral work with focus on the lagging right leg.

On Pull Day (deadlifts and/or GHR), I will be doing flat shoe close/deadlift stance partials to mimic the deadlift start off the floor. 

I will be doing some form of leg press more often than I do some form of squat or deadlift. Ha! 

My long femurs and short torso combination makes the squat not as productive for me as for more squat-favored lifters. But the leg press seems to be doing wonders for my quad size and in turn my squat progress. I am making the fastest progress of my life since I added the leg press. 

Also, I think I have no choice but to add direct calf work in the form of the donkey calf raise. I have to get my calves up to par now that my quads are expanding. I'm still not entirely sure one can truly increase the size of one's calves much through isolation training, but I've gotten amazing results by expanding my lower body training protocol already, so I'm willing it to give this a go. I won't cost me much effort and maybe I can get an extra inch on my calves. 

Aaaaaand I just realized that these foot extensions are best done in...the leg press! Hips are already at the correct angle to target the gastrocnemius. So I will be tacking this work on after each leg press session on squat day so they get hit twice a week with three or four days rest in between. 

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