Effective Lower Body Workouts
We've all experienced little tweaks and pains in the gym while training legs. Often, you may feel a crick in your quadriceps muscle which will scare you into skipping the rest of your quad movements and jumping over to the hamstring portion of your workout. Sometimes, there may be a pain in your knee, a sure sign you've overdone something.
Perhaps a tendon shifted or just experienced too much exertion. Or, maybe you've injured yourself seriously, and been forced to go under the knife. At some point in our lifetime of lifting, there if a very good chance we'll encounter a major leg injury which will put us on the sideline for a few weeks or months.
If the day comes, you just have to take your lumps. Luckily, you will still be able to train your upper body with a great deal of intensity. Injuring your shoulder means you can't train back, chest, shoulders or arms. However, an injury to your knee or quadriceps will still allow you to keep up the upper body training, which can be a blessing.
Without leg training, you can actually devote more training and recovery resources to the upper body, which might get your stubborn arms or shoulders growing after all this time. Here is a sample leg workout you can perform upon returning to the gym following a hiatus due to a leg injury.
Monday - Quads
Leg Presses 3 x 10
Squats 3 x 10
Hack squats 3 x 10
Leg extensions 3 x 10
Thursday - Quads
Leg extensions 3 x 10
Single leg presses 3 x 10
As you can see, this workout is very limited in terms of set and repetition volume. The amount of weight you use will not matter. You'll want to opt for a medium weight which allows you to stimulate the muscle group into a recovery and growth phase, without placing too much strain on the weakened muscle group. Give it time. Within a few weeks of starting this routine, your legs will be back to 90%, and you can return to your higher volume, twice-weekly leg routine.
This workout assumes you have been training upper body all along. If you had not, then you'd be better off starting back with a workout emphasizing only full-body workouts until full recovery has been achieved.
Remember that despite your urge to come back at full throttle, you'll only risk greater damage if you do. Talk to anyone who has sustained a major leg injury, and they'll all tell you the exact same thing. They were impatient, and they came back before they were 100% ready. If you do this, you'll experience some pain, and you'll end up being forced to again halt your gym attendance, this time for a few more weeks.
Do you want to get back to the gym for good? If so, then you need to follow the doctor's orders, as well as the advice of your peers. You'll probably need 6 to 8 weeks of rest following an injury. Take your lumps, enjoy your time off, then come back and train with a vengeance. Just remember to utilize a limited workout routine like the one above, when you do come back.
