 Alright, today we're going to talk about developing the muscles of the upper legs, specifically the quads and the hamstrings. Very big muscles, very important muscles for lots of different reasons. Today we're going to talk about their function. We're going to talk about best exercises. We're going to talk about reps, sets, all that great stuff if you're looking to develop amazing legs. The master class series continues. Yes. Yes sir. You know, it's interesting because the lower body in general, but you're talking about the upper legs, so important for athletic performance. So important for athletic performance. Do not skip leg day. No. You need, or just performance in general. You need strong, well-developed leg muscles. And then this translates to aesthetics. Now I know that there's a lot of, especially guys out there that will skip leg day because you can hide your legs, right, with pants. But when you expose them, everybody will, by the way, guys, every girl will tell you this. If you get down to your skivvies and your legs look like you don't work them out and you have a well-developed upper body, not only is it doesn't look right, it's a turn off. And why? Because we primarily know that this person doesn't have good function. This person can't move well. So don't skip leg day. Yeah. Well, to your athletic point, I mean, it's really where you're going to generate all your power. I mean, your legs are responsible for, you know, driving all of that explosive movement and getting your body to do all these like crazy athletic moves necessary to be a great athlete. So it's highly important. Now, do you guys think, I feel like this has changed a lot. The amount of guys that don't train legs. When I was a teenager and lifting weights, there was like one friend that trained his legs. Where now, when I think of like all my male friends, and I don't know if this is somewhat of a bias because I've gotten older and when I do for a career, I'm centered around mostly coaches and trainers. So maybe there's definitely a bias with me. That's why I'm asking. But it feels like it's the opposite now, where most everybody I know, he trains legs, but maybe I have one friend who's a leg skipper, but most do not. I would say Skipping Lake still happens, but way less. I think it's because of the popularity of the barbell movements, the barbell squat and deadlift. I feel like CrossFit really, that's another thing I think CrossFit did a really good job is getting the bros to squat. And there's lots and lots of memes, you know, when the memes stuff started happening, you know, internet kind of became a thing. Shame work sometimes. It does. And guys are like, oh crap, you can't deny it. Jess has been campaigning for bringing back shame. Bring back shame. We need it. You know, a back to the athletic point. So just to just to hammer that home, people think, oh, yeah, you got to run. That's why you need, you know, powerful legs. No, no, no. Pick an upper body movement, throw a ball, try not to use your legs, throw a punch, try to use your legs. You're going to have a you're going to generate a fraction of the power or you're going to be able to throw a ball a fraction of the distance without having good coordination and strength from the lower body. This is a terrible example. But I was just thinking about like treading water in a pool, right? And then you're trying to throw a ball or trying to throw a punch. So you have no, no grounding, no anchoring there to really like, you know, establish the whole rest of your body, which produces a lot of force through these muscles in your legs. By the way, I will also say this, more back pain comes from weak legs than a week back. A lot of people think back pain comes from a week back. Oftentimes it comes from a weak lower body. And then the back has to do work that it can't support. I think I actually, I think that that was a major contributor to my low back pain. Remember I talked about having low back pain for a really long time. And I think I had a weak, weak lower legs from not squatting or doing any of that stuff when I was a teenager. And it wasn't until first I started squatting and then I started deep squatting, did that completely go away? Completely. And I think it has a lot to do just with weakness in my legs. And so the lower back was overcompensating a lot in a lot of my movements. Yeah. So I totally agree. When you bend over to pick something up or you know, you're doing stuff where your back is active, the lower body is what's supporting it. And if the lower body can't do it, then the back has to do most of the work. And this is why you see lots of back injuries is actually weakness and immobility or mobility issues in lower body. And then of course, core and low back plays a role. But if you have bad back problems, and you don't strengthen the lower body, the chances of you really fixing the root cause are actually very small. You know, the irony around the young teenage boy skipping legs too is that I mean, at least if you can identify as the insecure skinny boy who wanted to build and be bigger, like, I mean, how how fixated were you on the scale? And how fixated were you on just being bigger in general? How funny is that? And you work, you don't work your legs out. Like, I mean, half of why I don't think I could ever get under 200 pounds anymore, it's just because my legs, my legs are so much thicker and heavier in now than they were when I was a teenager that I don't think I could get my weight down because of how thick and big they are compared to when I was younger. And yet that was the thing I was so insecure about as a teenage boy was being this skinny looking light kid, you know, you know, what's funny is I talked I've talked about this on the show. There was that summer, I want to say between sophomore and junior here, maybe in high school, it might have been that year, or that summer where I gained close to like 14 or 15 pounds, probably came from which is what that's when I squatted and dead lifted. Yeah. And I remember the the all my pants stopped fitting me. All of a sudden I couldn't wear any of my jeans because my legs and my butt had grown some and that's where a lot of the weight. I mean, I guarantee you that 14 pounds 10 of it probably went to my well, I know I'm not alone too. And even you start like barbell squatting like what that does for your upper body where I saw gains like in my shoulders, my chest. I'm like, what? Like just from adding that in is another, you know, big left. Yeah, not to go off on a tangent, but a lot of people don't know this that there is a strange limiting factor to how much muscle you can build that has to do with the rest of your body. So if the rest of your body is very underdeveloped, the part of your body that you do train will only go so far. And they actually shown this in studies, for example, they'll have studies where somebody will have a leg that's immobilized like in a cast, let's say, and they'll train the leg that can move or they do have people who don't train your leg. The people who train the leg that they can move lose less muscle in the immobilized leg. So there's like this interesting communication that goes on, but it makes sense because your body doesn't necessarily think in terms of muscle groups, rather as a whole, because when you move, I think a lot of that has to do to or at least I speculate a lot of that has to do with the CNS and what you miss out on by not squatting and deadlifting. So when you and I love your and this is why I've always loved your analogy with the amplifier and speakers when we speak of our central nervous system being the amplifier, our speakers being speakers being your muscles. And you put so much emphasis on building the muscles are getting big speakers, but little effort towards really developing, strengthening and building a CNS. And I mean, what would what builds the CNS the ability to fire and be strong like a deadlift and a squat. And I think that is where the there's everybody know or not everybody knows a lot of people have heard that if you are stuck on your bench and you can't get your bench up to build your legs up and it goes up. I think that I think that has even though you can make the case for leg drive supporting some of that, it has less to do with leg drive and then it's the overall development and improvement of the CNS firing that carries over into that. That would be what I would Oh, if you don't, if you're like, let's say you just love to bench press, you never work out your legs and you're trying to get your bench press go up, start squatting. Yeah. And you probably will see an increase in the unlock things. It's really weird, right? Today's giveaway maps performance. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you win, we'll let you know in the comment section. We're also running a sale right now in some programs. Maps starter, which is a beginner strength training program is 50% off. And then we have a bundle called the starter bundle that has maps and a ball of maps prime. That's also 50% off. If you're interested, just click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, here comes a show. And then mobility. And now in the fitness space when we talk about mobility, people think of like, you know, being able to get in weird positions and flexibility and twisting a lot of stuff. But in the most literal sense, mobility as a human in the modern world is you're able, you're able to go places, you're able to get up and walk and move. And when you get older, as you get older, one of the biggest contributors to loss of independence is your loss of lower body mobility, even more so than upper body mobility, your inability to get up and get back down or falls because you lose strength in your lower body are tremendous. I mean, I have older people in my family and you watch what happens, them sitting down and just getting up off the couch, even having to get different types of toilet seats and handles so they can sit down and use a bathroom. And if they fall down the ground, their legs aren't strong enough to get themselves back up, like in its most literal sense, strong legs give you great mobility or at least will be maintained for the rest of your life. So the case is essentially we're making the case that leg development is extremely important, extremely important. And then from an aesthetic standpoint, weak looking legs means you probably look weak overall. Athletes know this. But I think the average person knows this just inherently. You see somebody and you can see their whole body. And if you see a huge contrast between upper and lower body, doesn't look right. They don't look like they're strong. Right. Now, for those that are training legs, what comes to mind is like some of the biggest mistakes that people make. Like what do you like the people that are training legs? What are some of the biggest mistakes that you you would recall? Well, I would say not doing the best exercise is a really big I would say that's number one. Yeah, that's got to be number one. And then, you know, not treating lower body or any exercise in general, but specifically lower body ones like squats as a skill. But rather, I'm going to do these until I get tired. Yeah. To make squats and deadlifts and lunges and all these great exercise for lower body effective, you have to perfect the skill of those exercises. Otherwise, they're not dangerous. I would agree. Exercise selection as number one, number two, treating those exercises like a skill, getting good at them so that you could perform the well. And then three, I would say neglecting the hamstrings. Yeah. There's so many more pieces of equipment that address the quads and people don't see don't see as many hamstring exercises. You don't see it's on your backside. And I think most people neglect posterior chain as it is. And the hamstring still is a really big muscle. And when you want like shapely thick, good looking legs, like developing the backside is as important as the front. Well, I into that point, I even I feel like hip hinging movements don't get a lot of attention to your everyday average person in regards to like a squat, like a squat's a little bit more known. But like to really do a good hip hinging movement and add load to that takes a bit more education. It does. And then, you know, from an athletics standpoint, hamstring injuries are very common because you see an imbalance with quad strength over dominant quads. Yeah. And hamstring can't hamstring can't keep up. I forget what the percentage is your your hamstrings. Is it 60 or 80%? They need to be able to to to do it. Oh, I think it's I think I want to say 60%. Yeah. But I would say, I mean, God, how many times more often do hamstrings get injured than quads? Oh, yeah. It's kind of rare. It's what's slowing you down. It's decelerators. And so it's definitely one of the more common ones for athletes. It is. It's a very common one. So it's important to develop them. Now, to be fair, a barbell squat done properly develops a whole leg. But you want to do some exercises that kind of target the hamstrings, hip hinging, real important. I talked about back pain earlier. Besides the glutes, the hamstrings are probably one of the most important muscles for back health because it helps you hinge at the hips. And if those are weak, then it's all going to be lumbar spine keeps you upright. It is. So let's start with the quads. We'll start there first. Now, quadriceps, quad, meaning four, they named it that because there's four heads to the quadriceps. There's the vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, intermedius, basically outer, inner, you know, kind of middle quad. Those are the those three heads. Then you have the rectus femoris, which kind of goes down the middle and covers the whole thing. And really the function of the quads is to extend the knee. So if you bend your knee and then kick it out, that's what the quads do essentially. And then they stabilize the kneecap, the kneecap kind of floats over a joint on your your femur and really strong, good, healthy quads keeps that kneecap from, you know, grinding in one area or another or from popping out to left or to right. In fact, when I dislocated my kneecap to the outside, yeah, the same thing. Yeah, I was just going to point that out that it's so much that you could injure your knee sometimes. And the quad will help stabilize that. Yeah. So when I dislocated my kneecap when I was a kid, my left one, and it popped out to the outside. The physio told me to strengthen the, you know, the teardrop muscle of the quad. And it is very important for stabilizing. So it extends, extends the knee. I couldn't figure out why I didn't feel like anything was that wrong when I tore my ACL and MCL and the doctor, this was right at the height of like me being building a lot of muscle. I was pretty muscular and playing basketball. And then I tore it. And the initial injury hurt. And then, of course, the next day, when all the swelling hit in, but it mechanically, I felt okay. I didn't really feel like something, even though we did the X. They're like really challenging. Yeah. And I was remember asking like, man, really this I tore it like it doesn't it feels like I'm okay. And he's like, no, no, you definitely tore it. The reason why you feel okay is you've done such a good job of developing all the surrounding muscles that support this floating joint. And so even though you're missing important ligaments right now, you've got like some good support on that. That's how that's how how crucial it can be to build and develop muscle around those knees. So think about that as we age, just protecting the knees or like some of the most common surgeries that you hear out there in the elderly. And so, you know, that's another thing that's so important about building those those the quadriceps and building those legs in general is because it supports that joint and that joint is one of the most common joints that you hear people getting surgery. It is. And now, although I did say it extends the knee, people might think, oh, the best exercises are ones that just extended me. Not true. Like most muscles, they develop best when they're trained with other muscles in what are called compound lifts. We'll get to that a little later in the episode. But I just want to say that because once I mentioned the function, I think sometimes, oh, I'm just going to do exercise leg extensions only. And that does work the quad, but it's not going to develop the quads nearly to the degree or with the same functional, you know, strength as other exercises. Then we have the hamstrings hamstrings on the back of the leg. You have, you know, three muscles, the bicep femoris, semi, semi membranosis, semi tendinosis. And these muscles flex the knee, meaning they bend the knee back. So it's like you're trying to kick yourself with your heel, right? That's what that muscle does. And it flexes the hip or sorry, extends the hip, I should say. So it's like if you bend over and stand up, the hamstrings help stand you up. And they also involve the some rotation of the hip. And that's what those muscles do. Now, most people when they think hamstring exercises, they think leg curls, which is true, but you're missing out on a lot of development by just focusing on leg curls. Hip, I would say that, you know, really extending at the hips is we're going to get most the development of the hamstring muscles, which we'll get in all those exercises. So let's get to some of the best exercises. Now there's going to be carry over with some of these exercises, because some of these exercises work both the quadriceps and the hamstrings. The king of all exercises, which is, you know, it's widely known as the king of all exercise is a lower body exercise. It's known as the king of all exercises because of its effect on overall muscle, mass, performance, strength, you know, when you get good at it, protecting the back and the knees and the hips and just functional. And that's a barbell squat. It's one of the best exercises you can do period and a story. But it's a phenomenal quad and hamstring exercise. But I would say it's more quad dominant than hamstring dominant. Would you guys agree? Yeah, no, this is if you're trying to develop your quads, this 100% has to be in your arsenal, for sure, is is to squat. And back to your original point, not only squatting, but continuing to treat it as a skill and get better at it because that's one of the beautiful things about the squat is the reason why I think the benefits continue and continue on for so long. And it's so much more than almost any other exercise is because the difficulty of getting good at it and you're continuously seeing gains where let's say we do an exercise like you mentioned leg extensions, the body is going to adapt to that movement relatively quick because of the simplicity of it. You sit down in a machine, you're stable, you're supported, it's on a track, all you're doing is extending the knee at very, very little skill involved. And even though it's stimulating the quadricep really well, it's not very long before the body starts to adapt. It would get familiar really quick. Yeah, versus a squat, you could spend years squatting. And you can load it different. There's all kinds of different ways to approach a squat. And so you can emphasize it a bit more. So it's anterior front loaded. So now, yeah, your quads are going to be a little bit more enhanced in terms of like that specific exercise. So there's a lot of different ways to, you know, keep that fresh and keep your body responding from new students. But it's more it's also not just skill acquisition that lasts a long time. It's also skill maintenance. If you can do a full squat with load till the day you die in your nineties, you can do pretty much any you can walk, you can sit, you can climb, you've got great mobility in your ankles and your hips and your knees, good stability. So it's just it's just one of those it's it's one of the few exercises that's good in almost every category. Athletic performance, like very few exercises have the carryover of a barbell squat for just athletic performance, jumping, running, sprinting, stopping. I mean, punching, I mean, kicking, it's just it's got lots of carryover. So it's like this general amazing exercise that everybody should probably do. There's also this part to it is we know that one of the best ways to stimulate growth in any muscle is novelty. First time the body is being attacked that way. It's like, oh my god, the body has to adapt overcome. And the result is the building of muscle. And within the squat, there is so many novel ways to squat front squat, back low squat, high bar, low bar, sumo squats, narrow squats, tippy toe squats, front squat. Yeah, you literally can do it has like eight different novel exercises within one exercise. That is a huge difference thing going over and going like, Oh, look at that leg extension machine there. And then I'll try this other variation of that leg extension machine or leg press press. And that's about it. Yeah, right. Like the two options, those two or those two are closer together than a front squat is to a sumo barbell back squat. Right. Like those are so different. And yet then they get so much. And because it's novel again, you're going to continue to get reap more benefits. So you could live within the squat and all the different variations of it and get tremendous results from the cause just doing that. Yeah. And then there's a split stance exercises like lunges. This is way back, right? So when I was training people in the late 90s, early 2000s, lunges, believe it or not, relegated to like cardio classes, aerobics, jazzer size or something. Yeah. And it wasn't until I remember when this happened, it was Ronnie Coleman. It was Mr. Olympia. There was a video of him doing walking lunges with a barbell in the yellow in the yellow spandex. Yeah. And he's doing it in the parking lot. And obviously he was like the guys, a monster. And all of a sudden the lunges became like this. Oh, this is a great never see bodybuilders doing that. Yeah. Now everybody does. The truth is lunges and split stance exercises have always been super valuable. It's essentially a one-legged squat with a leg, one leg in the back, giving you support. It's also putting the split stance, which mimics running and walking. Yeah. Strengthens the pelvis because of the torsion. Dare I say one of the more functional exercises you could do? Absolutely. So lunges, phenomenal. And then up there is Bulgarian split stance squats, which are similar to lunges, but different. And both of those are a go to if I have a client who isn't isn't ready to barbell back squat. Yeah. So I know the goal is to get this client to barbell back squat because I know of all the benefits that we can reap from it. But if I'm limited for whatever reasons, whether it be injury, skill, or all the above, I Bulgarian split squats or lunges is a great substitute on the way of improving or getting that person to squat 100 percent. And then isolation, we said leg extensions, very easy isolation exercise for the quads. If you want to take it a step up, if you're more into like, you know, what you want more functionality, you want more strength, you want more muscle, try a Sissy Squat. Range of motion. Yeah, like a Sissy Squat is much more challenging and is I would call it an isolation mass builder, isolation muscle builder. I would pair it against a leg extension all day long. I don't even do I haven't done a leg extension on a machine like seriously for years and years and years. Once I discovered Sissy Squats and started doing those, I was like, why would I ever do a leg extension? This is so much better. So much value to that exercise. And it's funny because it's one of those exercises that like if you performed it back in the day, everybody would stop you and be like, don't do this, hurt your knees. This is crazy. What are you thinking? Even though it's like if you've done right and you're, you know, going to your limits and, you know, where you can comfortably control and stabilize, like it is such a great mass. I really I love the regression that Steve Cook did the other day. I hadn't seen somebody do that. I don't know why I didn't think to do this either. I've always done a Sissy Squat where I'm holding on to like a squat rack as like support. And he actually did it within the squat rack and he did band assistant. Oh yeah. So he's holding on to the bands. And he gives them more assistance on the way down. Yes. And you can adjust that by the thickness of the band. You want a lot of assistance when you get down, then get a thicker band. You want just a little bit of assistance, then get a thinner band. I thought that was brilliant. Yeah. Now you didn't list hack squats or leg press. Why? Those are good exercises, but they are machines. There's less carryover to the real world. You're stuck to the confines of the machine, where the sled goes, where the, where the plate is, where the back pad is. If you're taller than average, shorter than average, your mobility is different than average. It's not super gray. The carryover to the real world is, I mean, you can add a 200 pounds to your leg press is not going to give you the same carryover as a 30 pound increase on your barbell squat. So just to give you an example, the range of motion is shorter. I mean, bodybuilders like them because they like to isolate and squeeze and for hypertrophy purposes. But I mean, I, you can never do those and do just the other exercise and you would develop. So I, I agree with you, but I'm going to add in these three exercises. Honorable mentions because I do see value. Don't explain where they're at. I have one too. If you don't mention that the hack squats, uh, uh, the leg press and then, um, what was the third? He was elevated gubblet. No, I wasn't even thinking of a god because I would put that under squatting. Yeah, that's just I would put. Oh, and then sled drive. Oh, yeah. Those are the three case. Sled drive leg press and hack squat. And here's where all three of those actually kind of work similarly to how I would program these. If I'm somebody who's really focused on building their legs is those are all three great volume builders. So my the core of the core of my programming, the core of my training is built around all the ones you said, like that's my main focus always. Now I'm feeling good. I got an extra day in the gym. I want to, or I've been running my program for a while. I feel like my legs can take a little more volume. I'm dipping into those three. Agreed. That's great. That's so now, now I'm adding leg press. Now I'm adding sled in there. Now I'm adding hack squat in there to or I'm using it to give me a break because I overreached on some of the big compound lips. So let's say I've been crushing it and I hit barbell back squats and I'm on my second part, second time of supposed to be hitting barbell back squats again this week or front or variation front squats or something. And I'm still a little fried. I'm a little for my low back is a little fried or a little taxi on my hips maybe. So maybe I'm going to do drive the sled or leg press or hack squat because I want to pull back a little bit and because I overreached a little bit. So those three are in my arsenal and I'm going to use because I love those three movements also. But as a way of complimenting the core ones that you put in there. Yeah, I love those. All right. Let's get to the hamstrings. So hamstrings we talked about how they extend the hip and bend the knee. So let's talk about some of the best exercises. Well, it's got to be the best ones got to be deadlifts and all the different variations of deadlifts stiff legged Romanian, your sumo your conventional deadlift. Even just a regular conventional deadlift is a phenomenal hamstring movement. I love it. In fact, I haven't I almost I'll do stiff legged deadlifts and Romanian deadlifts, but they're not in my weekly routine. But conventional deadlifts are. And my hamstrings have always been strong and well developed from conventional deadlifts. So all those deadlift variations very functional, strengthens the back as well as the ham strings develops wonderful strong looking hamstrings also involves the glutes. Those have to be at the top for sure. Are you are you including good mornings in that conversation? Because I feel like that's a good question. I think you could right? Although it's not really a deadlift. I guess we have to mention. Yeah, I guess we have to say a good morning separately. Yeah, I mean, I think a good morning has to be in there. I mean, I know you put leg curl physio balls in there, which I like those also. But I would say for building my hamstrings getting big developed hamstrings the good morning because you could load. Oh, good morning. Yeah. I mean, good mornings. In fact, some people can load a good morning more than they can like a deadlift if they if you have a weaker grip, for example, like you don't you can't hold on to a lot of weight. A good morning sometimes people. So what a good morning does that's really good that I like is it if you have trouble really maintaining tall posture with a deadlift you can't you won't get away with a good morning. It teaches you I mean it forces you into good thoracic posture and good posture. Otherwise, it's going to be all lower back. You do a good morning wrong. Right. Just a little bit. Oh, this is I'm doing this wrong. So if you could do a good good morning, you could do a good deadlift. It's not true the other way around. I agree. That's what that's sort of the reason why I really like a good morning is it can be more challenging, but it forces you into good form or else the otherwise you feel it. Yeah. Or the bar comes rolling over the top of your head. So where a deadlift you could totally have a rounded back and bad form and technique and get the bar up and not even realize that you're training a bad pattern, bad form because of your technique and you're still able to get the bar off whereas a good morning in order to perform the good morning it requires good form. It's hard to have bad form and actually do the full exercise. You're right. And I mean talk about an exercise that fell out of favor because it looks scary and now it's popular again because everybody knows how awesome it is. But that that was an exercise that old school strength athletes did all the time. In fact, they used to compete for strength over. It was actually a strength exercise back in the day. And you'd see guys doing that with four or 500 pounds. And then it fell out of favor because of all of a sudden everybody said, don't bend over, it's bad for your back. Well, that's what you do with a good morning. Well, it's interesting. Yeah, you'll see some of these kind of more extreme exercises that are making a comeback, like even the Nordic curls are making a comeback in Jefferson. And so it's one of those things where it's like, you know, I think I think as these start to kind of make their way back and people understand the actual technique, they educated on them better, like they can start kind of pursuing, you know, outside of our conventional ones. But I think these conventional ones are the bangers. Yeah, so so just, you know, just just general, right? When we're doing these exercises and we're working the hamstrings, we're trying to do hip flexion and extension, not lumbar or low back, right? So picture somebody standing straight up. Yeah. If you could think of this person karate chop your hips. Now imagine them bending forward at the hips. So their back is totally straight the whole time. So it's like they're sticking their butt out and then coming back up versus rounding their back and coming up. That's the difference between hip flexion extension and lumbar flexion and extension. It's the hip flexion extension we're looking for. If you've never trained or done strength training or doing these exercises, it's going to feel weird. It's going to be hard to even get into the position to do this right. So this is you really got to perfect the skill to make this exercise effective. And of course, they're very safe when you do them right. You do them wrong. They're not so safe. Now what is what is the research support as far as like total volume? Is it is it equal to upper body or have we shown that you can actually handle more volume on the lower body than the upper body? So it's interesting you say that I think it would depend on the exercise and the lift. There's always a range, right? So total volume per body part you'll always see anywhere between nine to 18 sets per body part. Well, how can I do 18 sets for legs? Well, you're probably not going to be doing a lot of barbell squats and deadlifts. No. But what about nine? How can I make nine work when now you're probably doing more barbell squats and deadlifts? So, you know, total volume, you have to equate the exercise and the intensity and then all the other factors that that play a role. But these big gross motor movement exercises like squats and deadlifts like you could do less of them and get better results than you would doing more of a lot of other exercise. OK, so I want to piggy back off that point to the one that I was making earlier about volume builders. So then what that looks like mathematically of structuring a program is when I'm choosing my hamstring and my quad exercises, I want at least nine to 12 sets of those 18 at least nine to 12 of those 18 sets coming from those big lifts. Yes. And then the rest of the rest of these other exercises and you probably won't need to do anything else. That's right. If you want, that's why that's why I like that. That's the idea is the idea is that if I'm getting nine to 12 sets from these the big ones that we talked about is like the primary ones that we would build our program around that I'm I'm OK. Like I'm going to build a pretty damn good season. Now I have room to push it up to 15, 18, 12 based off of how well I'm sleeping, how well I'm eating, how good my body is feeling from it, that I could scale the volume up and that's where I'm going to use those. And it beats your advantage to pick some of those exercises that don't do quite as much damage. That's right. And recover a little bit better like your sled pushes, your sled drives, your sled. Yeah. Yeah. And now I want to add to this. More isn't better. So if you can do more, that just means you can do more and recover. It doesn't necessarily mean you're going to do better. For a lot of people, less is better. So the way you judge how many sets you can do is not how many sets you can tolerate or rather how many sets gives you the best results. How much you could tolerate is more than how than what is ideal. Ideal is ideal. So you want to aim for ideal. So it's not like don't push the volume until, oh, OK. The most I can handle is 18 sets. I'm going to work within that. No, no, no. Wait and see where your results come from and be like, oh, I get best results at nine. Then more won't do any better. Stick with the one that works the best. So I have a I have a small hack for and I know the next one of the next points you're going to make is the rep ranges, right? Anything between one and 25 reps, there's value of building muscle in there. But I have like a small hack for men and a small hack for women. If you're a woman, I challenge you to, you know, do the singles, doubles and triples and, you know, under five reps. Add that into your arsenal because powerlifting, because most of my female clients neglected the five or under rep ranges. And they saw significant benefits to building their butt, their legs, their lower body when they train that way. My men, 20 rep range. Oh, yeah. There's gold. And that's a little of a stand efforting who, I know, touts that a lot. There's so much. And I think the guys tend to go the other way. Guys love maxing out and saying they squat or deadlift a bunch of weight. Rarely ever do they put a weight on the bar that they can rep out 20 to 25 reps. And you want to see your legs grow, put 20 do 20 rep set sometimes. Now, intensity wise, for most people, you're looking to train with high intensity, but you're not looking to train to failure. Although failure training has value, the programming with failure training and the type of individual it works for is it's not the majority. It's minority. We have a program called Maps Anabolic Advance that that does that. But for most people, you want to train with a weight that allows you to perform your target rep range between, like we said, one to 25 that you could do. Let's say you did 10 reps. You could have done 12, but you stopped at 10. So always think of that, like, OK, I think I could do maybe two more, three more. I'm going to stop the rep the reps here. That's the intensity that you want to you want to be at. So it's a high intensity, but you're not pushing yourself until you can't do anymore. And that studies have shown to be the kind of the sweet spot for most people. Yeah. And again, stressing the the skill I think, I mean, off the top of my head, I can't think of a muscle group that has more skill exercises in than the lower body. Right. Oh, yeah. Wouldn't you say that? Like, I mean, like. I'd agree with that. Yeah. So so really when you get to lower body, a lot of these movements we talk about so much of them are skill and practice. And so perform very deliberately. Yeah. And instead of just and I know I challenge the, you know, the low reps and lifting heavy. And we know that load is going to do help out with growing. But there's so much room to perfect this movement and get good at moving. Like, you know, treat that when you go into these these workouts, when you're doing these exercises to get get perfect. And this is why when we gave you the set count for the week, you could do all those sets in one workout, but you're probably better off practicing more frequently and dividing those up. So rather than doing nine sets of leg exercises on one day a week, you're probably and most people get better results doing, you know, nine sets spread out over three workouts. So three sets on each workout because you can practice more frequently because fatigue isn't going to play as big of a role in your technique, your fresher. Most people are going to get better results dividing those sets up by a bunch of workouts rather than doing them all in one or two workouts. That's true for for most people. Look, if you love the show, head over to Instagram. Go to Mind Pump Media. We actually give well-planned workouts and exercises there for very low costs. It's under $5 a month. Mind Pump Media on Instagram. You can also find all of us on Instagram if you want to follow us. So Justin is at Mind Pump. Justin, I'm at Mind Pump to Stefano and Adam is at Mind Pump Adam.