BEST exercises for quad growth?
Stick to stable exercises with lots of ROM, that are limited by the target muscle group and that you can load properly. Good quad exercises include back/front/smith machine/hack squats, leg presses, leg extensions, sissy squats, deep lunges and step-ups. Rather than using the wrong exercises, many people are performing the right exercises for quad growth, but fail to use full ROM, which hampers the growth they get from it.
The Quad Specialisation Template is out now and is 33% off for the next week! No discount code required. Check it out!
Back Squats
Back squats are stable, can be loaded very adequately and, if done properly, take the quadriceps through a near full ROM. They also have other benefits – they take the glutes and adductors through a very long if not full ROM and grow them around as much as they grow your quads. As far as compound exercises for the quads go, these exercises are among your best options (including cambered and safety bar squats).
Front Squats
Front Squats are a controversial exercise for quadriceps growth. While they fulfil all the criteria for a solid quad growth exercise, they have one major drawback that is worth considering. First, most people find the bar placement somewhere between mildly uncomfortable to excruciatingly painful. While it’s hard to quantify how much of a drawback this is, it does certainly make doing a lot of volume and/or weight on this exercise more difficult for most people. Admittedly, the discomfort does get more bearable over time, but, by the time that it does, front squats will likely start becoming increasingly stale soon.
There is a second issue that people sometimes bring up with front squats for muscle growth: that their mid-back gives out before their quads do. I’m not sure how prevalent/valid this concern is, but it’s worth keeping in mind.
Smith Machine Squats
The standard way of doing smith machine squats is the same way you’d do a high bar squat – that is, with your feet beneath the bar. This is a good exercise – it has many of the same benefits that high bar squatting has, with the only difference that it will require less stabilization.
There’s another way of doing smith machine squats, though. Instead of having your feet directly underneath the bar, you can place them slightly forward (perhaps 4-10 inches from your normal position). This will make the squat much more upright, reducing the distance (moment arm) between both your hips and the bar and your erectors and the bar. Simply put, this adjustment will make the lift much easier on your glutes/adductors/lower back compared to a normal squat. However, by putting your feet forward, you will also shift your knees far forward, making the exercise much more difficult on your quads, in addition to making it easier to get more ROM for your quads. All in all, this adjustment transforms the exercise into something much more akin to a hack squat than a free-weight squat. It will likely stimulate your hip extensors and erectors much less than a regular squat, and is more likely to be limited by your quads. Thus, it’s a good exercise to use when quad growth is your goal, if most squatting variations are limited by hip extensor strength for you, and/or if the rest of your program is quite axially fatiguing already.
Leg Presses
Leg Pressing is another good quad exercise. One benefit that leg pressing has is that it, unlike all other compound quad exercises, it does not require you to brace nearly as much, and does not produce nearly as much axial and systemic fatigue. Thus, it can be used more effectively for higher rep ranges. Much like the feet forward smith machine squat (though it plays this role even better), it can thus be used when the remainder of your session and/or program contains lots of axially loaded exercises already, and managing axial fatigue becomes a concern for injury prevention and/or fatigue management.
Belt Squat
Belt Squats have a few benefits. First, because you’re using a harness to load the movement, you don’t have to brace as hard, which, in my experience, makes the movement much easier systemically while still being hard on your quads. This makes it better suited to higher rep ranges than axially loaded squats. Additionally, much like leg pressing, the harness also drastically reduces axial fatigue, and allows you to focus on your quads.
Hack Squat
For most intents and purposes, the hack squat is very similar to the feet forward smith machine squat. The biomechanics are comparable.
Leg Extensions/Sissy Squat
I have really mixed feelings about leg extensions. They’re a partial ROM exercise – very few machines allow you to get a full stretch, and there’s only so much MacGyvering you can do to make it better. However, they’re also one of the only robust options we have to isolate the quads (which is useful for axial fatigue management reasons, and for higher rep work, since lower body compounds for higher reps is a recipe for being limited by systemic fatigue rather than quad fatigue).
There is one alternative: the sissy squat. Specifically, the advantage they have over the leg extension is that they allow for full ROM. They do suffer from one meaningful drawback, however – they are quite difficult and unstable, which makes doing them for higher reps somewhat problematic. If you can tweak things to fix those issues, though, I can see sissy squats being a superior option.
One of the most compelling reasons to include a knee extension isolation exercise in your program at one time or another is to maximize growth for your rectus femoris. Because the rectus femoris inserts at the hip and at the knee (much like most of the hamstrings), it probably doesn’t get maximally stimulated during compound quad training (much like the hamstrings don’t get maximally stimulated during squatting). So, isolating knee extension makes it possible to adequately train that head of the quads.
Deep Lunges
Deep lunges are often overlooked for quad growth. The advantages of this exercises are that they are not very axially fatiguing and are unilateral (allowing for asymmetries to be remedied). However, they also have drawbacks – to be precise, they are usually quite systemically fatiguing (I’m restricted to doing sets of <12 reps/leg because of how out of breath they make me) and can be unstable, which makes it difficult to reach local muscular failure. To fix the stability concern, try using the smith machine, a safety bar, or do unilateral split squats with a dumbbell in one hand and use the other to hold on to the rack. To make lunges more quad focussed, take shorter steps and let the knees come forward, past the toes.
Step-Ups
Step-Ups are slept on for quad growth in my opinion. They have many of the same benefits as lunges, but they have fewer of the drawbacks. For one, I find them to be much more stable than lunges. I also find them much less systemically fatiguing than lunges, even for the same reps. The only issue I run into with these is avoiding cheating the lift-off portion (from the ground) with the rear leg.
That wraps up the quads. More muscle group exercise selection articles on the way!
Reminder: if you’d like to see what effective quad programming looks like, check out the Quad Specialisation Template. For the first week, it will be 33% off!