{"id":253553,"date":"2025-10-26T23:44:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-26T23:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/253553\/"},"modified":"2025-10-26T23:44:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-26T23:44:19","slug":"an-exercise-researcher-shares-a-two-move-leg-workout-for-people-who-hate-leg-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/253553\/","title":{"rendered":"An exercise researcher shares a two-move leg workout, for people who hate leg day"},"content":{"rendered":"

You hate training legs? You\u2019re 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<\/a>). 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<\/a> designed for all you leg-day avoiders \u2013 one that he says delivers solid muscle gains and strength.<\/p>\n

\u201cHaving no legs whatsoever is ridiculous,\u201d says Dr. Pak. \u201cSure, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Flamingo legs aside, he also mentions other \u2013 more important \u2013 benefits, including improved bone density and muscle mass, both of which naturally decline as we age.<\/p>\n

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The workout features two compound exercises<\/a> \u2013 one targeting your quads and the other your hamstrings \u2013 and follows his minimum effective dose training principle, meaning you do the least amount of work required for meaningful results.<\/p>\n

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\u2019re simply short on time, this minimalist training approach could be the solution \u2013 and this is the two-move leg workout he suggests.<\/p>\n

Dr. Pak\u2019s two-move leg workout <\/p>\n

Dr. Pak says not only are these two exercises time efficient, but they\u2019re also easy to take close to failure, if not full failure. He adds this is important when training with very few sets.<\/p>\n

1. Leg press<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: Shutterstock)<\/p>\n

“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\u2019re doing cardio,” Dr. Pak says. He suggests aiming for four sets of 5-8 reps on this, and that it\u2019ll leave your quads, glutes, and adductors in growth mode. \u201cI 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.\u201d Focus on hitting depth (even if that means going a bit lighter) as Dr. Pak adds it will stimulate the working muscles more.<\/p>\n

Get all the latest news, reviews, deals and buying guides on gorgeous tech, home and active products from the T3 experts<\/p>\n

2. Dumbbell Romanian deadlifts<\/p>\n

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\"Woman\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Dr. Pak says you can do this with either both legs or single legs. \u201cGrab 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\u2019ll keep you in the five to 12 rep range.\u201d For those who aren’t a fan of RDLs, Dr. Pak recommends good mornings using the Smith machine.<\/p>\n

“The nice thing here is that the above won\u2019t only give you solid muscle gains, but you will also gain plenty of strength too,” says Dr. Pak. “As long as you\u2019re doing your compound quad exercises and compound hamstring exercises, so a squat and a hinge pattern exercise, you\u2019re ticking a lot of boxes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You hate training legs? You\u2019re not the only one; leg day is hard and requires not only physical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[337,97],"class_list":{"0":"post-253553","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-fitness","9":"tag-health"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}