Pro League Legs How I Developed My Legs, & How It Changed With Time

When I first started to train my legs, I would focus on compound exercises such as squats and leg press.

- Sam Forbes IFBB Pro

I noticed over time that my quads were developing well but I lacked muscle in my glutes and hamstrings which gave my legs an unbalanced appearance. This was apparent during my first couple of competitions where my legs lacked the detail and shape I needed to win. I asked IFBB Pro Rosie Hart (@rosie1rascal) to coach me and I began to notice huge improvements in my leg development.

I was training in a small gym at first which meant there was less variety of equipment. I then moved to a bodybuilding gym (Yorky’s Gym, London) last year allowing me access to machines that I had never used before. I was able to isolate my glutes with the abductor machine and build more dense muscle, using a variety of movements such as the hack squat and lying leg curl.

Why I train the way I do?

Being a body fitness/figure athlete, I need a balance of dense muscle and condition. I have therefore found that adding variety to my training is key to me achieving both of these qualities. I like to focus on heavier compound movements to build the main size in my legs. Personally, I find barbell squats uncomfortable for my body type so using the hack squat and leg press works as a perfect alternative.

To achieve the detail and conditioning in my physique, I tend to select more isolation exercises. This way I am able to focus on contracting a specific muscle group. This has been super beneficial to adding detail and shape to my weaker areas. I find that with my glutes, I struggle to activate them efficiently. To develop my mind- muscle connection here, I choose to perform an isolation exercise before any compound movement. This is called pre-exhaustion and ensures I feel the targeted muscle working better during my compound exercises. An example of this would be doing leg extensions before hack squats.