legs growth

Grow legs with bodyweight exercises.

As we’ve seen in previous posts, one of the main concerns people have when starting bodyweight training is whether or not they can build muscle. If you’ve been reading our articles, you should already have a pretty good understanding about what factors are needed in order to grow muscle.

The truth is that your body does not care what you use as resistance, whether it is dumbbells, machines or your body weight, as long as the resistance is challenging enough, ie. you suffer :)

In order to grow muscle mass, it is usually recommended to work with 3 to 5 sets of 8 to 12 reps with 45 seconds to 1 minute rest between sets. At Enso Calisthenics, we like to stay conservative regarding hypertrophy (muscle mass growth) and usually stick to a basic scheme of 4 sets of 10 reps, with less than 1 minute rest.

The problem that we find with legs is that they are made of the most powerful muscles in our body, therefore it seems hard at first to find bodyweight exercises that are challenging enough.

But let’s not discard bodyweight leg training so soon...

First of all, let’s remember that there are many different variations of bodyweight exercises for legs and that some are already pretty hard.

For example, how easily can you do 10 pistol squats in a row? If the answer is anything between “I can’t do a single pistol squat” and “I can do it but not easily at all”, then you can be sure you’ll be able to find exercises to grow your legs even if you have no heavy equipment.

And we don’t want to scare you, but you should also know that pistol squats are not even the hardest exercise you’ll find in our method!

The other thing worth noting is that we do use a few pieces of equipment to help with our leg training, as long as they are movement-focused. Resistance bands can make any exercise harder, try squatting with a heavy band and you’ll see! Too easy? How about pistol squats with a resistance band?

Last but not least, we know a very nice trick for you to get that pump even if you don’t have, or don’t want or are not allowed to use heavy weights. Run with inclination or cycle at a high resistance until your legs burn, then pick 3 or 4 exercises that are usually challenging and do 4 sets of 10 reps with short rest.

Starting with tired legs and following a bodybuilding routine like this is a proven method to grow legs just as effectively as with machines or weights. You might want to curse us at first but you’ll thank us later!

Now that you have all the cards in your hand, go and crush that leg day!