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Great legs aren’t just for show. Training the quadriceps muscles should be an integral part of your fitness routine since they are important for virtually every lower body movement.

The quadricep group (quads) is made up of four muscles that run along the front of the thigh. (Specifically, they are the Quadriceps femoris group comprised of the rectus femoris, vastus intermedius, vastus medialis, vastus lateralis.) They all share the quadriceps tendon that encloses the kneecap, and these muscles have one primary function: to extend and straighten the leg.

Yet, a strong set of quads also helps to protect your hips and knees, and toning these big muscles will have a tremendous effect on your appearance.

Exercises to tone the quad group

Whether you want to become a better runner, protect your knees or develop better-looking legs peeking out from under shorts or a miniskirt, try these exercises. The three most common quadriceps exercises are step-ups, lunges and squats.

Begin your workout with the step-ups. Repeat the exercise to fatigue. Move directly to lunges and perform 12 to 20 reps. Then move on to squats and do 12 to 20 reps. For the lunge and the squat, you can use hand weights to increase intensity. Repeat the entire set two or three times depending on your level of fitness.

Step-ups – Place your right foot on a step and your left foot on the floor. Push off as little as possible with the left foot as you step up. (You’ll now have two feet on the step.) Lower your left foot back down to the floor. Work with body weight only, and repeat to muscle fatigue regardless of the number of reps. Step-ups are a great toning exercise, and they also serve as a warm-up for lunges and squats.

Lunges - Step forward with one leg. The back heel can lift off the ground as the weight of the body is over the front foot. The front knee should not be further forward than your toes and the back knee can be dropped as low as the ground, but don’t rest it on the ground. When you have reached a comfortable position try holding there for a few seconds. Return to the upright position with your feet side by side. Repeat the exercise five times, then change legs. You can also do this exercise with a dumbbell in each hand.

The following squat exercises are good because they hit all “four heads” of the quadriceps-the rectus femoris and vasti muscles: lateralis, medialis and intermedius. The rectus femoris runs down the center of your thigh and functions as both a hip flexor and a knee extensor. It crosses your knee and hip joints, attaching at your pelvis and below your kneecap. The vasti muscles-the lateralis and medialis (on either side of your knee) and the intermedius (beneath the rectus femoris)-run from the top of your thigh down to the knee and work only to extend your knee. Squats are the main muscle bulking exercise for the quads and there are many variations using machines, free weights, wall sits, and the floor. Here are a few examples:

Floor Squats – Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, your arms at your side. Inhale and swing your hands slightly forward for balance while bending at the knees and hips to a sitting position. Your butt shouldn’t drop below the level of your knees and your knees should not extend past your toes. Exhale and slowly return to a standing position, dropping your hands to your sides. Repeat to fatigue. You can also use dumbbells with this exercise.

Seated Leg Press and Leg Press Sled – With your feet placed in the center of the foot plate about shoulder-width apart, exhale and push on the foot plate, fully extending the sled. Do not straighten the knee so that it locks into extension; also don’t bend the knee into your chest. You can vary the position of your feet on the foot plate to adjust the muscles being worked; place your feet at the top, middle and lower part of the plate, in order to work all of your quadricep muscles. Choose a weight that allows you to do 12 to 20 repetitions comfortably.

Wall Slide – Stand with your back against the wall with your feet shoulder-width apart, about foot away from the wall. Bend your knees to a half-squat position, keeping your back in contact with wall and your heels on the ground. Lower yourself to a 60 degree angle; pause, then lower another two inches down. You should be about thigh parallel now. This exercise can be even more effective when doing it with one leg at a time and should be performed until the legs are fatigued. Make sure that your gluts and stomach are held tight.

You can also use a large Swiss ball pressed between your back and the wall. Use the same guidelines as above, keeping your back in contact with the ball while it travels freely up and down the wall.

One Leg Dumbbell Squats – Position yourself with one foot firmly placed on a step box, in order to increase the range of movement for the exercise, or you can simply bend one leg. Holding onto either a chair, or keeping your hands against a wall, lower yourself down, keeping your back straight and head up. When doing any squat-style exercise, you need to avoid extending your knee past your toes, and focus on taking your butt to the floor rather than bending your leg. Repeat to fatigue doing 12 to 20 reps.

Heels Raised Squats – Performing squats with your heels raised one to two inches on a solid platform will force your quadriceps to work through a different range of motion, as your knees are extended pass your toes. For good balance you should aim to perform this method with your legs wide, with a bar placed behind your neck, also in a wide arm grip. Keep your back straight, contract your buttocks, and push down with your heels to smoothly lift yourself back up to the starting position. Repeat for desired amount of reps.

And the machines…


The Leg Extension machine is a better exercise for toning than for bulking up. The Leg Curl is best to do last in a sequence of three exercises, after the squat and the leg press.

The leg extension machine is a safe quadriceps exercise for most people who don’t experience ACL problems in their knees.

Use a variation in strength exercises such as dumbbell lunges, barbell step-ups, and single leg squats which are much better choices since they are kinetic chain exercises. The only athletic movement the leg extension is functional for is kicking, which requires a powerful isolated quadriceps contraction.

The adductor and abductor machines will work your inner and outer thighs, but those are smaller muscle groups. Concentrate on the larger leg muscles to improve the firmness of your legs.

To really shape and define your thighs, it’s important to utilize all four quad muscles in your workouts. If you typically use only the leg-extension machine at your gym, you’ve been working these muscles solely as knee extensors, without involving the rectus femoris as a hip flexor, missing a chance to shape and tone your thighs.

If your goal is to sculpt a long lean body from the waist down, then concentrate on doing high reps combined with low weights which will build endurance but won’t create a gain in muscle mass. Moves such as squats and step-ups allow you to put even more emphasis on the lateral and medial quad muscles for the most visible results.

When Your Quads Take Out Your Knees

Many runners complain about achy knees and one of the best ways to prevent knee injuries, or to protect an already injured knee (e.g., a torn meniscus or degenerative joint disease), is to build up the quads. If this describes you-if you ache under the knee-cap, and it hurts to straighten your knee after it’s been bent for awhile-maybe your knees aren’t the problem.

Patello-Femoral Syndrome (PFS) is a condition caused by the patella (knee cap) not tracking properly over the thigh bone. The patella normally rides in a groove on the femur, and gives leverage to the quads on the front of the thigh. With PFS, the outside quad muscle overpowers the inner medial muscle, and this pulls the patella out of its groove.

If you’ve got knee pain after exercising, it could mean your quads are tight, and doing some serious stretching after your workout may help. Give it a try. Your knees will thank you for it.

Stretch the Thighs After Your Workout

The exercises listed above are likely to cause stiffness in the quartets. If you work these muscles without also stretching them they’ll get short and tight pretty quick, so do the classic quad stretch: stand straight and grab hold of a stationary object for balance. Grab the right ankle with the right hand and pull upwards toward the buttock, keeping the knees together, the hips rotated forward, the trunk fully upright and the standing foot pointed forward. Hold for the pose for at least 15 seconds. Then repeat on the left side.

Stretch Stretch Stretch!!

People are so crunched for time that they just want to get their workout over with and they don’t realize how important a few minutes of stretching the quads mean to the knees. Plan on spending just 5 to 7 minutes stretching both before and after exercise or activity, and you’ll find it helps prevent soreness and injury, and will enhances muscle tone to give your thighs a more sculpted look.

Creating washboard abs

A flat stomach or a well-defined six-pack is the envy of just about everybody and has become the mark of a physically fit individual. The problem is most people would like to have killer abs without having to work for them. They waste money on TV ab exerciser gadgets, do a pathetic set or two, and give up.

So how can you seriously approach sculpting your stomach if you’re not genetically blessed with washboard abs?

Flattening the stomach is not achieved thorough “spot reducing” exercises – not that there is such a thing. The only way to develop well-toned abs includes total body training, proper diet, cardiovascular exercises and strength training.

But first, let’s look at the abdominal musculature: The largest muscle of the abs group is the Rectus Abdominus which is the long, partitioned, single muscle running straight up and down the center of the abdomen, and commonly referred to as the “six pack.” The other two muscle groups that complete the abdominals are the Transverse Abdominus, and the External and Internal Obliques. The Transverse Abdominus, located at your sides, acts as “nature’s girdle” keeping in your innards; and the Internal and External Obliques (the “love handles”) work to rotate the torso and also contract to compress the abdomen.

Start with a Proper Diet and Do Plenty of Cardio

It’s true, you can do hundreds of crunches every day and develop strong abs, but if you have lots of fat covering them up, you won’t look any slimmer. Therefore, begin your abs training from the inside out, since the most important aspect of conditioning them is controlling your diet. Beautiful, well-defined abs are built in the kitchen, not in the gym.

And since a healthy diet is a life-long habit that you must work on every day of your life, the least you can do now is to start reducing your portion size during meals. You’ll have days when you can’t resist that cheeseburger and fries, but you can eat more slowly, drink more water, and fill full more quickly, then hopefully you’ll skip second servings, as well as dessert.

Control your portions and the size of your stomach will actually shrink over time and you’ll find that you will become satisfied while eating less.

After the kitchen, the second step to abs training is in your feet, since the best way to slim down is to do plenty of cardiovascular exercise. You have a variety of fun activities to choose from including biking, running, brisk walking, swimming, aerobics, racquetball and so on, as long as it is an exercise of moderate intensity where you can get your heart rate up for at least 30 minutes.

Try to do cardio about five times a week so that you can start burning the extra calories you’ve packed on as stored fat. Once the layer of subcutaneous fat comes off your stomach, your skin will become more taut and you can work on toning the abdominal muscles.

Get to know your Target Heart Rate

Generally speaking, your target heart rate is the range of heart beats you should work at in order to challenge the cardio-respiratory system. The zone then, refers to the duration and intensity of exercise you need in order to get the targeted cardiovascular training benefits.

A maximum Heart Rate (HR) is the theoretical number of beats that your heart is capable of safely beating in one minute. The formula simply requires you to subtract your age from 220. For example, if you are 40 years old: 220 minus 40 = 180 beats per minute. Therefore, a typical target heart rate of 60% of your HR max of 180 would be about 108 beats per minute. Look at these ranges in the Heart Zones and use them as a guide when doing cardio work:

The first zone is called the Healthy Heart Zone which is 50-60% of your max Heart Rate (HR). Walkers most likely train at this zone which is not intense enough to get great cardio-respiratory benefits, but it will give overall fitness benefits.

The next level is the Fitness Zone which is 60-70% of your max HR. In this zone you can actually condition the rate of fat release and train your muscles to burn fat.

The Aerobic Zone trains at 70-80% of your max HR. Studies show that you can expect to increase the number and size of blood vessels, stroke volume (amount of blood pumped per heart beat), and respiratory rate while working in this zone.

The next level is the Anaerobic Zone, which is 80-90% of your max HR. At this rate you can expect cardiovascular benefits to include an improved maximum VO2 capacity (the highest amount of oxygen you can draw in during exercise). Your heart will become more efficient at transporting oxygen to the cells that need it (as well as removing waste products such as carbon dioxide).

At the top is the Redline Zone which is 90-100% of your max HR, or the fastest your heart will beat. This zone is for interval training and lasts only a few minutes.

Variety is the key to getting your cardio fitness benefits. There are a number of activities you can try that will put you in the “zone” and help you reap the benefits of cardiovascular exercises. Some of these benefits include the reduced risk of heart disease and diabetes, and the lowering of high blood pressure and cholesterol. Cardio workouts also help you to increase your lung capacity, make your heart stronger (so it won’t have to work as hard to pump blood), increase metabolism and strengthen your immune system.

Exercises to Hit the Upper and Lower Abs

Well developed abdominals are not only aesthetically pleasing they are important stabilizer muscles that keep your skeletal structure in check and act as a support system for most weight training exercises. For example, when performing heavy shoulder presses, a strong set of abs helps to protect the lower back from injury.

There are a number of variations of ab exercises you can do but the mainstay is the “crunch” which will target the entire group of muscles.

Crunch – Lie flat on your back on the floor with your legs in front of you bent at the knees. While resting your hands on your chest, lift your shoulders and torso up in a curling movement without raising your back from the floor. Keep the tension on the abs, breathe out as you crunch up, and return to the start position. Do them in a controlled fashion; two seconds to rise, two to lower. (And don’t confuse a crunch with a traditional sit-up; in a crunch you do not lift your lower back off the floor or bench.)

Cable crunches – On your knees, grab a bar or rope attachment at the end of a cable, with your wrists against your head. Then crunch down, keeping the hips stationary but slightly flexed. Return and repeat. As with all ab exercises, work to failure on each set of reps.

Barbell Twist – Hold a light barbell on your shoulders and sit at the end of a flat bench with your feet firmly on the floor. Without moving your head and keeping your back straight, twist your torso to the right, then to the left by twisting at your waist only. This rotational exercise also works the obliques well.

Bicycle Crunch – By adding a twist to crunch work, you can work the obliques nicely. To work your side obliques, lie flat on your back with your knees bent. With your left hand over your left ear, roll your upper body up to the right until your left elbow touches your right knee. Contract the muscles on the sides of your waist. Return to the start position. Switch to your right side and repeat.

Leg Raises – Lying flat on your back on a mat or an incline bench, keeping your hands relaxed at your sides. With knees bent, raise your legs six inches off the floor, and hold for a moment. Lower your legs and repeat.

Hanging Leg Raises - Using an overhand grip on a pull-up bar, and keeping your knees slightly bent, exhale and slowly lift your legs up. Make sure your lower back stays rounded. Pause a moment before slowly lowering your legs back to the start position. This exercise will effectively hit the lower abs if you contract your abs and lift your legs as high as you can – higher than hip level. Otherwise your hip flexors are doing all the work.

An Ab Machine will work the entire abdominal complex. The machine is designed to simulate a crunch, but you can add weight to increase the resistance.

The Roman Chair or Hyperextension Stand. Sit on the chair, cross your arms over your chest, and place your feet under the pads for support. Lean back until you are in a horizontal position. Crunch your shoulders forward, placing the stress on the abs, and return to an upright position.

No sit-ups on the list? That’s right, because even when they are done properly, full sit-ups tend to put the workload on the hip flexors and not the stomach muscles. The key is to do exercises that mainly work the Rectus Abdominus, and for that, the simplest exercise is the crunch. A sample ab workout should include: 1-2 forward flexion exercises (crunch, etc.); 1-2 side flexion exercises (side bends, side crunches, etc.); and 1-2 rotational exercises (trunk rotations, standing twists, etc.). Work your abs at most three times per week, and leave them for last since you will indirectly be using them for all the other weight training exercises. If you do your abs first, you will tire them out and it will affect your entire workout.

Suck In Your Gut

If you know of people who are naturally lean but who still have a round little pot belly, chances are they have weak Traverse Abdominus muscles. When you can’t make it to the gym, you can still do exercises around the house or office to work the abs.

Try this: Blow out all of your air and suck in your stomach, holding it for 15 to 30 seconds. It’s that simple and you can easily be working on slimming your waistline during the day. You can also contract and flex your abs in between sets to improve muscle definition – bodybuilders do it all the time, and it works.

Once you begin to shrink your stomach through proper nutrition, and add regular cardiovascular and strength training workouts to your life, your shy abs will begin to show themselves off. As your total body fitness improves you can achieve your goal of getting a ripped six-pack, or just a good-looking flat stomach peaking out under a sexy midriff top.

Have you ever slipped on a sexy strapless dress or muscle shirt, looked at yourself in the mirror, and realized that there’s still something missing?

Like muscles. That is, a noticeable show of sinewy muscles in your back, chest, shoulders and arms. Ones that are buff, beautifully toned, and make you look healthy. If you don’t see that reflection in the mirror, then that’s reason enough to start a full body strength training workout, one that is grouped into alternating days of: back & biceps; chest & triceps; quads; and finally, shoulders, calves & abs.

Whatever your goal, be it toning or power lifting or just keeping the flab at bay, it’s time to train your body to fire (contract) a higher percentage of muscle fibers at the same time, which in turn builds strength. Men who want to add size to their upper bodies need to encourage muscle hypertrophy which they can do through a low volume program of high intensity lifting -i.e., doing few repetitions (3-6 per set) while working with heavy weights. Guys who want to firm up but not necessarily bulk up, should concentrate on doing moderate sets consisting of more reps, doing 2-3 sets of each exercise. Ladies who want to tone and firm as well as get stronger, should do a higher number of reps (15-20) using lighter weights, and working more sets (3-4 per exercise). (more…)

Weight lifting benches are gaining in popularity for home gyms since they are a great way to add variety to your free weights workout. But benches are multi-functional in other ways as well. If you have a large home gym you can also use them under a barbell rack or Smith machine, or use the bench with or without hand weights to target specific areas in your workout.

Adjustable Weight Benches

Adjustable weight benches on the market can range from as little as $75 to several hundred dollars depending on the features added onto the bench. The classic position for the bench press exercise is the flat position — where you focus on your chest and other muscles (such as the shoulders and triceps), but most benches now offer an incline/decline seatback (with an easy spring-loaded pin adjustment) to allow a variety of exercises. For example, an incline bench can be adjusted to imitate a preacher bench so you can focus on your upper arms.

You can adjust a bench to allow you to enjoy dozens of variations of weight lifting exercises. Take crunches, for example. When you want that extra “crunch” you can change the angle of stress on your abdominals by changing the incline of the bench, or do crunches while lying on top of the bench, or you may find it more comfortable to lie on the floor and put your legs across the bench.

When shopping for a weight lift bench you’ll want one with a vinyl seat cushion that is sweat-resistant, and easy to clean. The steel frame should be sturdy and scratch-resistant, as well as rust-resistant. Get one with wheels if you can, since wheels are especially nice for moving a 50 lb. bench around the gym to position under a rack. You can even find a removable leg lift with and adjusting Olympic adapter on some of the high-end models. Make a smart choice, and the right choice, and see for yourself the advantages of adding a weight lifting bench to your home gym.