Summer is an epic time to build killer bodybuilder legs. And MUTANT has the most badass bodybuilder three-day split to get your legs looking incredibly thick and ready to sport those swimming trunks.

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Here, we give you the comprehensive summer bodybuilder leg workout, split into three intense training sessions: quads, hamstrings, and glutes. Why three different workouts? This gives you a comprehensive leg training regimen to target every muscle in your legs. Plus, working the lower body with a ton of volume leads to massive overall human growth hormone spikes, leading to insane muscle gains throughout the body, upper and lower.

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Without further ado, let’s get to the workouts.

Bodybuilder 3-Day Leg Split

Day One: Build Bodybuilder Quads

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Hack Squats: 4 sets x 6-8 reps\n
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Leg Press: 3 sets x 8-10 reps\n
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Leg Extensions: 3 sets x 12-15 reps\n
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Dumbbell Lunges: 2 sets x 8-12 reps (per leg)\n
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For all these exercises (including the hamstring day and the glute day), you’re looking for a slow, controlled eccentric — muscle lengthens, e.g., lowering portion of a squat — motion and an explosive, controlled concentric — muscles contract, e.g., upward phase of a squat — motion. Performing these movements in such a way will lead to the most muscle fiber breakdown and maximal blood flow to the area.

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As you can see, the rep range goes up while the sets go down. With this, the weight will fluctuate down per exercise. That’s because the more reps you do, the less sets you need to do. In addition, performing an exercise for more reps means less weight is needed.

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Your heaviest exercises will be hack squats and leg presses since these are the compound exercises that engage all your lower body muscles — glutes, hamstrings, and quads. The weight will be lighter for the isolation exercise that directly engages your quads (leg extensions).

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With every exercise for building bodybuilding quads, progressive overload is the key; always increase reps or weight every workout. Luckily, with this three-day split, you only work these movements once a week, giving you ample time to recover and avoid plateauing.

$\"Traditional$

Day Two: Hamstring Exercises

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Traditional Deadlift: 5 sets x 5 reps\n
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Floor Glute-Ham Raises: 4 sets x 10 reps\n
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Leg Curls: 3 sets x 10-12 reps\n
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Kettlebell Swings: 1 set x 50 reps\n
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Training hamstrings are all about staying healthy while obtaining tremendous definition. If you’re dealing with a hamstring pull, your legs won't look very good, so getting them stronger than you thought possible is key. And since the hammies contain three muscles compared to their antagonistic counterpart — quads, which contain four — they’re more easily injured in athletes.

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The deadlifts need to be HEAVY. The StrongLifts 5x5 method is ideal for building otherworldly strength on the deadlift, and a traditional variation provides the most stretch in your hammies. (Even standing on a platform to bring the barbell further toward the ground is a great way to maximize that hamstring range of motion.)

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For the floor glute-ham raise, weight isn’t involved, so you want to improve total time under tension. Do 10 reps every time, but see how slowly you can do the reps without stopping. These will be killer, but if you can control more of the range of motion, you’ll be both injury-proof and ready to show off at bodybuilding events.

Day Three: Glute Exercises

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Sumo Deadlifts: 4 sets x 8-12 reps\n
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Barbell Glute Bridge with Band Abduction: 4 sets x 8-10 reps\n
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Bulgarian Split Squats: 2 sets per leg x 10-12 reps\n
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Standing Calf Raises: 1 set x 50 reps\n
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The protocol for your glutes is simple; you’re looking for a squeeze at the top of every repetition. Sumo deadlifts and barbell glute bridges with a band around the knees for abduction do double time with the nice glute stretch at the bottom and the tremendous amount of force at the top.

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For the first three exercises of this workout, you’re looking for a slow, deep stretch. However, during the calf raises, try to have a tight squeeze going in your glutes while stabilizing and letting the calves do their thing.

Conclusion

There you have it! Three days of intense lifting to get all facets of your legs to the level of a professional bodybuilder. Try these training sessions for 10-12 weeks and see how much strength and size you add to your legs.

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It’s still summer, and you deserve MUTANT-sized legs. Get to the gym and get to work!

Article by Terry Ramos

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Muscle loss is a legit fear when doing things that contradict gains, like going on vacation. However, it’s extremely difficult to lose muscle, and it isn’t in the way you would think.

Here, MUTANT debunks some of those crazy muscle loss myths you might’ve heard about, setting you straight on which things cause muscle loss and which things don’t.

Myth 1: A Training Break Leads to Muscle Loss

Many believe missing a week's training can set you back, but that’s far from true. Let's be honest: If training were that crucial, we'd do it daily and get anxious when the gym is overcrowded. In fact, research shows that training just once a week can preserve your strength. (1)

Luckily – and this goes back to ancestral times – a human being’s muscle preservation is top-of-the-line. It takes about two or three weeks of abstinence from the gym for a person to lose strength, which isn’t necessarily muscle. While it depends on the person in terms of how fast this happens, going on a two-week vacation isn’t going to kill the progress you’ve made in the gym. And if you’ve been strength training consistently (which, hopefully, you are if you’re reading this!), then the strength and muscle gains will come back fast.

Sure, you might have to deload and bring yourself back by about five pounds on most of your lifts. But the muscle fibers will remain thick and full the whole time you’re sipping fruity drinks on an island.

Myth 2: Fasting = Muscle Loss

This one has some nuance because there comes a point where too prolonged of a fast will lead to wasting away both muscle and fat. But for intermittent fasting, don’t sweat the potential for muscle loss. A shorter fast won’t inherently cause muscle atrophy. So if you normally fast for less than 20 hours daily and keep the day-long fasts down to once a month or once a quarter, muscle loss won’t happen.

However, to fully preserve muscle, the last meal you eat before a decent fast should have plenty of protein, carbs, fats, and fiber to slow down digestion and preserve muscle mass while in the fasted state.

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The Truth: What Causes Muscle Loss?

Muscle atrophy is, in fact, very difficult to achieve. If you lift and eat right, it should never be an issue. However, two big factors play into whether your muscles are growing, staying the same, or shrinking:

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Stopping activity long-term: Injuries or busy life can derail even the best workout routines. If you don’t move around or lift for months, you will notice a change in your physiology, and NOT for the better.
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Aging: Father Time wins all wars, but we can make it a fight in a few battles. You can’t completely escape the wrath of muscular atrophy as you age, but you can prolong muscle strength and size with proper nutrition and strength training.
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Solutions for these are simple. For the first factor, always find a way to move your body, even if it’s a walk, a handful of push-ups before bed, or air squats before and after a meal. These small bouts of muscle activation keep the body prepped and ready for whatever you might throw at it.

Secondly, consider taking vitamins to stop age-related muscle loss. The best vitamins to take are C, D, and E. These nutrients are found in many protein sources, but if you want to fortify your diet, a high-quality multivitamin should have all three in spades.

You have complete control over muscle loss and muscle gain. So, don't worry the next time you embark on that cruise. Continue to be the badass that you are, and you won’t have to fear that you’ll lose your hard-earned muscle growth anytime soon!

Article by Terry Ramos

Reference

^{Spiering, B. A., Mujika, I., Sharp, M. A., & Foulis, S. A. (2021). Maintaining Physical Performance: The Minimal Dose of Exercise Needed to Preserve Endurance and Strength Over Time. Journal of strength and conditioning research, 35(5), 1449–1458. https://doi.org/10.1519/JSC.0000000000003964}

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Build Massive Bodybuilder Legs With This Summer Workout

The Top Common Muscle Loss Myths, Debunked by MUTANT