Exercise Details (Quads Workouts)
Why you want to gain a huge quad muscles? Is it to have a great looking body shape! To help you better in athletic sport like cycling or running! To develop a Strong leg to free you from future injuries? To gains legs which fit in jeans perfectly! Or on the other hand, to have a Powerful body? …
Actually All these questions are related and linked in some points. In 4 minutes of below section you will discover what we talk about and covering the best quad strengthening exercises and those queries.
Quads Function
The Quads “Quadriceps” are powerful huge combined group of muscles involved in movement and pushing. It’s located in the front of the leg with main function to extend the leg at the knee and to flex the hip.
“Actually you use the quads whenever you straighten up a bent knee”
Even though quads are sometimes an accessory or afterthought for leg days, the muscles are still a major key to a strong, and shapely lower body.
Quads for Sports and Daily Life
In everyday life, they help you in walking, get up from a chair, Climb stairs and Squatting. And support you in sports like speed running in marathon and jumping in basketball. If we talk about running and to improve your performance and prevent training injury, you need to do plenty of leg strength exercises. Having strong leg muscles will not only help improve speed, but also provide better stability for your joints, and reduce wear and tear on the ligaments.
“Quads are a large muscle group that can exhaust quickly”
One of favorite sports which develop best quad strengthening exercises naturally is cycling. Cyclists are known for having monster thighs which will leads you to summiting big climbs or sprinting to the finish line. Strong quads build your resistance to exhaust and improve the punch in your pedal stroke. But that does not mean Biking is an alternative of legs workouts, it supports this muscle but it’s not the main routine exercise.
On other hand it’s recommended to add Bike exercises to your workouts plans to support and sculpt the quad muscles as quickly possible to gain quads of your dreams.
Quads Injury
If you’ve suffered from knee pain for any length of time, the doctor could advise you to avoid the exercises that cause this pain such Moves like squatting, running, and jumping.
The quads often become weak after injury is sustained or surgery is performed on the lower leg or thigh. For this reason, it is important to learn how to strengthen this muscle group for a complete recovery and before this could happen.
Quads Muscle
The quads function are powerful muscles responsible for ex-tensors of the knee joint. which is crucial for movement activities. In addition, it’s main function to flexor of the Hip.
Quads Structure
The quad is composed of (4) distinct muscles on the front of your thighbone. The name quadriceps derives from muscle structure of four-headed:
The Rectus Femoris, which is located in the middle of the thigh, and is the only quad muscle involved in hip flexion.
The Vastus Medialis, or teardrop muscle, which is located on the inside of the leg by the knee.
The Vastus Lateralis, located on the outside part of the upper leg.
The Vastus Intermedius, which is located between the vastus lateralis and vastus medialis on the front of the upper leg.
Benefits of this Workout
There are many benefits for quads workouts at home, which target the lower-body. Below is list of major benefits:
Quads exercise not only help get toned legs but they help achieve body wide muscle building by creating anabolic atmosphere in our body.
You will become more efficient in burning calories by doing quad building exercises.
Quads exercise help improve flexibility of our joints and bones as with the passage of time our legs, joints and bones get effected but quads can help us get rid of them.
The effort required for quads will strengthen your cardiac muscles and enhance our lung capacity.
If you ever feel dead leg, numbness or tingling than it could be a sign of poor blood circulation in our body. Quads help revive blood circulation in our body.
Another surprising benefit of Quads is that they help in the removal of waste from the body, while delivering nutrition to all important joints and tissues of our body by performing best quad workout.
Safety Equipment
Before starting, it is highly recommended for you to wear knee pads to avoid any sort of tissue damage or dislocation of bone. As in Quads exercises their is high stress and pressure will effect Knees area and mostly require to wear these safety gears.
Do we need a Warm-Up?
Warm ups and stretches are a significant part in every workout of our body part. Based on a study, a warm up should imitate the expected exercise by pumping those muscles. We can do high knee slaps for our quads warm up. Stand straight with hands pointing towards roof. Then lift your right knee upwards and slap your knee gently with lowering your right hand. Repeat the set with left knee too.
Other Helpful Detail Quad Stretches and Warms-Up.
Leg Extension
My favorite is the leg Extensions however, when done improperly you can damage the knee joint. Leg extensions are not meant to be done with heavy weight, but a variation of lighter weights and volume.
The objective here is to pre-exhaust your quads and floods your knees and muscles with as much blood as possible. This will warm you up and improve your mind-muscle connection.
Best Quad Strengthening Exercises
Exercise # 01: Body Weight Squat (Quads)
(Equipment: No equipment required. Body Only)
By quads, basically we mean squats. It covers the front and side muscles of our legs. Thigh strength and muscle development is an important part of our body but it’s usually been neglected by most of us. There are many exercises which can be considered as quads. The best leg exercise bunch of quads is leg press and squats. You can do home squats. For this just follow these simple steps.
How to do Quads?
- Slightly bend your knees, feet shoulder width apart and knees should be lined up over your ankles. Don’t forget to keep your back straight, otherwise you will end up with back pain.
- Slowly bend at your knees and make a 90-degree angle. You may lose balance, so you must lean a bit forward to keep up the balance.
- Gently return to the starting position, making your legs pumped up.
- Here is a tip for the readers “the motion of this exercise is similar to sitting in a chair”.
- The primary muscles affected from this Quad Building Exercises will be Gluteus maximus, Quadriceps and the secondary muscles will be hamstrings.
Repetitions
You may follow this quads exercise repetition in (3) sets with 10, 8, 6 reps and (1-2) minute rest as recommended.
Exercise # 02: Barbell Front Squat
(Equipment: a Barbell, different Weights)
How to perform?
- Stand-up straight on front of Barbell.
- Set a barbell on a rack on shoulder highest. No need to go further heavy weights, since you want to get high repetitions.
- Step under the barbell, so that it lands on front of shoulders, and place your fingers under the barbell, with elbows pointing forward.
- Un-rack the weight, and step backward carefully. Your feet should be parallel with shoulder width.
- Inhale as your squat down by simultaneously pushing your butt backward position.
- Keep your torso upright, and your knees are bent at a 90-angle degree.
- Exhale as you push your body back up straight to starting position, keeping your torso upright.
Repetitions
You may follow this repetition for 4-5 Reps.
Exercise # 03: Wall Sit
(Equipment: a Swiss Ball)
How to perform?
- Put your back against a Swiss ball.
- Slight down slowly until your thighs are parallel to the floor with 90 Degrees. Then Hold this position for a while.
- Insure your torso is straight.
- Slowly back to starting position. by straighten your knees.
Repetitions
Repetition for 3 times, rest 1 minute.
Exercise # 04: Diagonal Walking Lunges
(Equipment: Dumbbells)
How to Perform?
- Stand straight with your feet hip-width apart, hold a weighted dumbbell in each hand.
- With this quad exercises, Step out on a diagonal with left leg, and lower down into a lunge until your rear knee nearly touches the floor.
- Your front thigh is parallel to ground.
- Step forward with your rear leg, then step out to the side again, creating a zig-zag pattern.
- Go back to start position with straight torso.
Repetitions
Repetition for 4 times, with 1 min rest.
Exercise # 05: Leg Press
(Equipment: a Leg Press Machine, a pair of knee pads for support)
Precaution Required!
For safety purpose In leg press exercise, when you re-rack the weight, always make sure the platform is properly locked.
How to do Leg Press?
- When you start using a leg press machine, just sit down on the seat and place your legs on the stand of the machine. The width of the legs should be equal to shoulder width for better balance.
- Secondly, lower the safety bar of the leg press machine while holding the weighted platform properly and stretch the legs to full extent. Before removing the safety bar, do check the platform weight by just pushing it to avoid any mishap.
- While inhaling, allow the platform to come down and make sure that your upper and lower legs make a perfect 90-degree angle. If it’s not the 90-degree angle, it means it is not correct.
- Then push back the platform to its starting position with the help of your heels and quadriceps while exhaling.
- Don’t forget to lock the safety bars before removing your legs from the surface of the platform for legs exercise at home.
Repetitions
Recommended to perform 8 – 10 Reps.
Challenge enough to Boost your Body to Next Strength level!
There’s (lots) more! In the next article, you’ll tackle different Muscles workouts.
You will be pleased by see more results by Time.