You hate training legs? You’re not the only one; leg day is hard and requires not only physical strength, but often mental grit too (and sometimes a big scoop of pre-workout). But rather than skipping it altogether, Exercise Researcher Dr. Pak Androulakis-Korakakis has shared a simple, two-move leg workout in a recent YouTube video designed for all you leg-day avoiders – one that he says delivers solid muscle gains and strength.
“Having no legs whatsoever is ridiculous,” says Dr. Pak. “Sure, nobody really cares, but especially if you have a well-developed upper body, you will look like a flamingo and lose quite a few lifter respect points.”
Flamingo legs aside, he also mentions other – more important – benefits, including improved bone density and muscle mass, both of which naturally decline as we age.
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The workout features two compound exercises – one targeting your quads and the other your hamstrings – and follows his minimum effective dose training principle, meaning you do the least amount of work required for meaningful results.
According to his research, completing around four sets per muscle group per week can lead to measurable muscle growth. So whether you dread leg day and want to get in and out of the gym quickly, or you’re simply short on time, this minimalist training approach could be the solution – and this is the two-move leg workout he suggests.
Dr. Pak’s two-move leg workout
Dr. Pak says not only are these two exercises time efficient, but they’re also easy to take close to failure, if not full failure. He adds this is important when training with very few sets.
1. Leg press
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“The trick with this exercise is to load it pretty heavy so that you can be in and out quickly without the pain of grinding out reps on reps and feeling like you’re doing cardio,” Dr. Pak says. He suggests aiming for four sets of 5-8 reps on this, and that it’ll leave your quads, glutes, and adductors in growth mode. “I recommend a leg placement that allows plenty of knee flexion, so you can blast your quads a bit more, but honestly, any leg placement that feels comfortable will be fine.” Focus on hitting depth (even if that means going a bit lighter) as Dr. Pak adds it will stimulate the working muscles more.
2. Dumbbell Romanian deadlifts
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Dr. Pak says you can do this with either both legs or single legs. “Grab a pair of dumbbells, hinge, go as low as you can, pause for a couple of seconds and voila! Hamstrings, glutes and lower back getting a great stimulus without having to load a barbell. Ideally, use straps for these and do your best to choose dumbbells that’ll keep you in the five to 12 rep range.” For those who aren’t a fan of RDLs, Dr. Pak recommends good mornings using the Smith machine.
“The nice thing here is that the above won’t only give you solid muscle gains, but you will also gain plenty of strength too,” says Dr. Pak. “As long as you’re doing your compound quad exercises and compound hamstring exercises, so a squat and a hinge pattern exercise, you’re ticking a lot of boxes.”