How to get pro player's quads and thighs?

Artreddy

Artreddy

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Berdych, Federer, Murray all have great quad muscles. My personal experience tells me doing squats alone won't get all around muscles like the pros have. They seem to do variety of workouts to get those front, left, right quad muscles. If y'all know any workouts, please share here. Thanks!
 
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Main one of course is squats. Leg curls and leg extensions are extremely bad for your knees so should only be done as warm up/ or cool down exercises and not too heavy.
 
MasterZeb said:
Main one of course is squats. Leg curls and leg extensions are extremely bad for your knees so should only be done as warm up/ or cool down exercises and not too heavy.
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Leg extensions yes, leg curls there's a lot of debate on. If you're doing them on one of those machines where you lie down and you aren't swinging the weight up they are fine. The seated ones have the same problems as seated leg extensions, shear force on the knee.

Frankly there's no reason to do leg extensions when things like split squats/lunges/and step ups exist.
 
Bicycling, jogging, lunges, weighted step-ups, squats (back, front, & hack) leg extentions (hold on to the handles and keep your butt pines in the seat), and simple walking
 
Artreddy said:
Berdych, Federer, Murray all have great quad muscles. My personal experience tells me doing squats alone won't get all around muscles like the pros have. They seem to do variety of workouts to get those front, left, right quad muscles. If y'all know any workouts, please share here. Thanks!
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Squats will grow your quads, but you're better off spending more of your time on plyometric style workout if you're going for functionality.

If you just want to grow your quads then get on the leg press and some leg extensions. You might get lucky and blow out your knees at the same time
 
Artreddy said:
Berdych, Federer, Murray all have great quad muscles. My personal experience tells me doing squats alone won't get all around muscles like the pros have. They seem to do variety of workouts to get those front, left, right quad muscles. If y'all know any workouts, please share here. Thanks!
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Who wants big legs ???
 
Back squats just below parallel are the main exercise for quads. To change things up you can also do front squats and leg presses. Front squats target the quads more than back squats. Only problem is, you won't be able to do as much weight, and if your form is off you could be limited by other factors like your wrists or the bar falling off your shoulder, but it's a great exercise to improve your mobility and work your core. For hamstrings, I like to do Romanian deadlifts, which has the added benefit of improving your conventional deadlift by involving your posterior chain.
 
wings56 said:
Squats will grow your quads, but you're better off spending more of your time on plyometric style workout if you're going for functionality.

If you just want to grow your quads then get on the leg press and some leg extensions. You might get lucky and blow out your knees at the same time
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Not if you do it correctly. Hire a trainer for a few (3 or 4 max) sessions, and specifically concentrate on compound exercises, squats dead lifts, hack squats, etc. ...

Take your time and watch the trainers at the gym, like tennis players or coaches there or those who are better or better suited for you than others. Properly doing the exercises both physically and your mental approach will almost certainly reduce your probability to injury to almost nil. The hardest part is controlling the mental focus and the ego though.
 
wings56 said:
Squats will grow your quads, but you're better off spending more of your time on plyometric style workout if you're going for functionality.

If you just want to grow your quads then get on the leg press and some leg extensions. You might get lucky and blow out your knees at the same time
Click to expand...

Squats and plyo actually work well together. One of the best tips I learned recently is to warm up with a few explosive movements before doing squats. This could be something like box jumps or frog jumps, not a lot, just enough to get warmed up. This gets your neurons firing so your squats will be more explosive.
 
I'm 52 and have tiny chicken legs (21 inches) at their peak.

I stopped playing tennis for a week due to a sore knee and they seem to have shrunk a bit!

They get my 70kg around the court pretty fast so I'm not complaining.

Thick legs are good for top end speed like in a 100 metre sprint,skinny legs are not much slower off the mark as they tend to be more agile.
 
FYI, unless you don't like your knees, don't do leg extensions. Ask any good personal trainer, they wreck knees at even low weights. Do squats or leg press instead, and don't neglect the hamstrings ... for optimal knee health and performance, you want your hamstrings to be matched in strength to your quads ... not easy to do but makes a world of difference.

1. Play a lot of tennis
2. Plyometrics ... with and without bands, including lunges with and without weights
3. Play more tennis

Get enough protein in your diet to be able to build muscle.

Also, not everyone will genetically be able to build large muscles .... wouldn't it be better to just be the strongest you can be without worrying about size?

BTW, I am one of those that builds muscle stupid fast, it makes shopping for clothing a real pain.
 
OnTheLine said:
FYI, unless you don't like your knees, don't do leg extensions. Ask any good personal trainer, they wreck knees at even low weights. Do squats or leg press instead, and don't neglect the hamstrings ... for optimal knee health and performance, you want your hamstrings to be matched in strength to your quads ... not easy to do but makes a world of difference.

1. Play a lot of tennis
2. Plyometrics ... with and without bands, including lunges with and without weights
3. Play more tennis

Get enough protein in your diet to be able to build muscle.

Also, not everyone will genetically be able to build large muscles .... wouldn't it be better to just be the strongest you can be without worrying about size?

BTW, I am one of those that builds muscle stupid fast, it makes shopping for clothing a real pain.
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Pro tip. Don't ask personal trainers anything
 
I have decent quads, and like the strong tennis player leg look. I use bleacher sprints, box jumps, weighted and body weight squats, lunges, and such.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Sirius Black said:
Pro tip. Don't ask personal trainers anything
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Agreed. Not saying there aren't good personal trainers, but all it means is that they paid a bunch of money to take a days worth of classes for a certificate. Literally anyone can become a personal trainer in a couple days.

My advice would be barbell squats as well. They've made my legs bigger and stronger, and I've seen a massive improvement to my tennis movement as a result. Just make sure you're using good form and hitting proper depth in the motion otherwise "leg day" just becomes "patellar tendon day."
 
Plenty of lower body plyometric work with lower body strength training mixed in using various equipment(bosu ball, TRX cables, etc)

- Plyo work includes box jumps, stairs, "basketball free throws",

-strength work includes:

- lunges(weighted/bodyweight)

- front squats +bulgarian split squats(prefer front squats to work legs/core) and not back squats,

- calf raises,

leg extensions/curls with low weight/high rep scheme (havent had any knee issues yet and been doing them for 15+ years, not sure where people are on about how their bad for your body)
 
Notirouswithag said:
Plenty of lower body plyometric work with lower body strength training mixed in using various equipment(bosu ball, TRX cables, etc)

- Plyo work includes box jumps, stairs, "basketball free throws",

-strength work includes:

- lunges(weighted/bodyweight)

- front squats +bulgarian split squats(prefer front squats to work legs/core) and not back squats,

- calf raises,

leg extensions/curls with low weight/high rep scheme (havent had any knee issues yet and been doing them for 15+ years, not sure where people are on about how their bad for your body)
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Just my opinion, but lunges, front squats, and split squats are all sub-optimal lifts. They don't really belong under strength work. They are more like toning and assistance work. Almost every strength guru prefers the back squat as the main lift because it involves the most weight, the most amount of muscle involvement, and applies the greatest amount of stress to your system.
 
OnTheLine said:
FYI, unless you don't like your knees, don't do leg extensions. Ask any good personal trainer, they wreck knees at even low weights....
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I'm assuming you mean knee extensions....they can be a useful tool in some aspects to those who know what they want to get out of it.

OnTheLine said:
...for optimal knee health and performance, you want your hamstrings to be matched in strength to your quads ... not easy to do but makes a world of difference.
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And how would you go about measuring this ratio objectively?
 
RogueFLIP said:
I'm assuming you mean knee extensions....they can be a useful tool in some aspects to those who know what they want to get out of it.



And how would you go about measuring this ratio objectively?
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On knee/leg extensions (never heard that machine called a knee extension!) if you have a patellar stabilizer bar to attach to the machine, then yes it is useful, if you don't, then they can simply do more damage than help, particularly at higher weights.

In terms of the hamstrings, yes, very hard to objectively measure, but knowing that the average non-pro athlete has quads that are twice as strong as their hamstrings gives you a good starting point ... After many knee surgeries both my surgeon and my PT stressed hamstring strength to stabilize and protect my now ACL-free knee. So for every 1 quad specific or whole leg exercise, I do 2 hamstring exercises.
 
OnTheLine said:
On knee/leg extensions (never heard that machine called a knee extension!) if you have a patellar stabilizer bar to attach to the machine, then yes it is useful, if you don't, then they can simply do more damage than help, particularly at higher weights.

In terms of the hamstrings, yes, very hard to objectively measure, but knowing that the average non-pro athlete has quads that are twice as strong as their hamstrings gives you a good starting point ... After many knee surgeries both my surgeon and my PT stressed hamstring strength to stabilize and protect my now ACL-free knee. So for every 1 quad specific or whole leg exercise, I do 2 hamstring exercises.
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Rogue Flip is a PT, btw
 
OnTheLine said:
On knee/leg extensions (never heard that machine called a knee extension!) if you have a patellar stabilizer bar to attach to the machine, then yes it is useful, if you don't, then they can simply do more damage than help, particularly at higher weights.

In terms of the hamstrings, yes, very hard to objectively measure, but knowing that the average non-pro athlete has quads that are twice as strong as their hamstrings gives you a good starting point ... After many knee surgeries both my surgeon and my PT stressed hamstring strength to stabilize and protect my now ACL-free knee. So for every 1 quad specific or whole leg exercise, I do 2 hamstring exercises.
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I never heard the term "knee extension" either. I'm sure you can improve the exercise with devices, but what's the point? There are so many exercises out there that are more effective anyway.

One problem with getting the hamstrings up to par with quads is that there aren't as many exercises specifically for hamstrings and none of them will work the hamstrings to the extent that squats or leg presses will work the quads. Right now I do Romanian Deadlifts and Lying Leg Curls for hamstrings. If anyone else knows any effective hamstring exercises, that would be great.
 
Ramon said:
I never heard the term "knee extension" either. I'm sure you can improve the exercise with devices, but what's the point? There are so many exercises out there that are more effective anyway.

One problem with getting the hamstrings up to par with quads is that there aren't as many exercises specifically for hamstrings and none of them will work the hamstrings to the extent that squats or leg presses will work the quads. Right now I do Romanian Deadlifts and Lying Leg Curls for hamstrings. If anyone else knows any effective hamstring exercises, that would be great.
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Glad it wasn't just me on that term .... different regions, different names ... I think I am the only person who calls a leg press the Hip Sled .. a term from MN/WI !

Lying leg curls and standing leg curls definitely target different parts of the hamstring as it comes to machines

I also like dead lifts! Love the combination of that nice stretch all the way through the lower back with the feeling of power on the lift... often doing one legged with dumb bells or a kettlebell after finishing with the bar.
 
Ramon said:
I never heard the term "knee extension" either. I'm sure you can improve the exercise with devices, but what's the point? There are so many exercises out there that are more effective anyway.

One problem with getting the hamstrings up to par with quads is that there aren't as many exercises specifically for hamstrings and none of them will work the hamstrings to the extent that squats or leg presses will work the quads. Right now I do Romanian Deadlifts and Lying Leg Curls for hamstrings. If anyone else knows any effective hamstring exercises, that would be great.
Click to expand...

Knee extension would be the technical term since, in fact, the knee joint is extending
 
Mac33 said:
I'm 52 and have tiny chicken legs (21 inches) at their peak.

I stopped playing tennis for a week due to a sore knee and they seem to have shrunk a bit!

They get my 70kg around the court pretty fast so I'm not complaining.

Thick legs are good for top end speed like in a 100 metre sprint,skinny legs are not much slower off the mark as they tend to be more agile.
Click to expand...
Train like a cyclist?
 
OnTheLine said:
I also like dead lifts! Love the combination of that nice stretch all the way through the lower back with the feeling of power on the lift... often doing one legged with dumb bells or a kettlebell after finishing with the bar.
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I love deadlifts also, but since we were talking about hamstrings, I specifically mentioned Romanian deadlifts. The Romanian deadlift is a variation that specifically targets the hamstrings. On the surface it looks kind of like a stiff leg deadlift, but you keep your hips and back in a neutral position instead of the posterior tilt that everyone has when they bend over for a deadlift. When you do this, it fully stretches the hamstrings so they will have to activate in order to complete the lift.
 
Never skip leg day brah!

Leg-Day-STACK-.jpg
 
I've been researching this a bit since it seems to me that everyone who has good movement and remains uninjured needs big quads.

IMO the two best exercises seem to be (and dont require weights!):

- shrimp squats for strength (or a variation of - the real shrimp squad is probably too difficult for most to do) also known as the hardest lower body weight exercise there is. builds single leg strength so its even
- running up a stair case doing interval training. I'd say 30 second bursts on then 30 seconds off for 10-20min depending on goal
 
I get my legs from bicycling, as a means of transportation, because I don't have a car. Walking too.
 
Whats the verdict on lying leg curls and leg extensions wrecking your knees?

I do both, but I don't extend completely when I do extensions.
 
FiReFTW said:
Whats the verdict on lying leg curls and leg extensions wrecking your knees?

I do both, but I don't extend completely when I do extensions.
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You're fine as along as you adjust the machine. Your knee should line up with the bench so its supported and naturally rotates.
 
While some of the replies on here are jokes, we need to eliminate the stigma of squats, deadlifts, and even the olympic lifts. Where on earth did we get the idea that these exercises are bad for anyone, let alone tennis players?

Are full range of motion (ass to grass) squats difficult?
- Yes. You don't have to do them to full depth. Even a parallel squats bring results. Can't speak for depth above parallel.

Will compound lifts like squats, bench-press, and deadlifts make you slower because they tend to bias force production over velocity?
- No, you can regulate and periodize your training so you're not continually fatigued. Also, training in the gym is not the same as training on a tennis court. You need to do both.

Do the olympic lifts carry a month's long learning curve (particularly the snatch)?
- Hell Yes

Is there an inherent risk to weight training?
- There's an inherent risk to everything, maybe you should stop driving your car because you might get into an accident, or the mafia might strap a bomb under your exhaust. Who knows.
 
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