When it comes to the largest of the four quadriceps muscles, the vastus lateralis, the squat group was the only group that saw statistically significant muscle growth. The main takeaway from this study is fairly straightforward: squats don’t seem to do much for growing your rectus femoris, but leg extensions do. The researchers also measured thickness in the vastus medialis, but sadly, less than half of the images were clear enough to use and they scrapped it from their analysis.įinally, counter-movement jump height increased by 3.9% in the squat group, but not at all (0.3%) in the leg extension group. Mean quadriceps growth from squats vs leg extensions. The leg extension group saw statistically significant growth in their rectus femoris at all three measurement sites, while the squat group didn’t see statistically significant growth at any site. When the researchers retook the measurements after five weeks of training, they found several differences in muscle growth. Results: Different Exercises, Different Muscle Growth They also performed counter-movement jump (CMJ) tests before and after the training. They took a three to five-minute rest between sets.īefore and after the five weeks of training, the researchers used ultrasound to measure the cross-sectional area of the participants’ rectus femoris and vastus lateralis at three different sites along their thigh bone: 25% (closest to the knee), 50% (middle), and 75% (closest to the hip) of femur length. When they could do more than twelve reps per set, they increased the weight. The squats were done until their thighs were at least parallel to the ground, and the leg extensions used full ROM as provided by the machines used. They trained their respective exercise three times per week, doing four sets of twelve reps to muscular failure each workout. Yes, they used the infamous smith machine, *gasp*! However, in terms of quad muscle growth, squatting with a smith machine or a free barbell probably doesn’t make much, if any, difference. In this new study, twenty-seven young men with strength training experience completed five weeks of either smith-machine squat or leg extension training. 5 Squats or Leg Extensions for Five Weeks A new study has compared squats with leg extensions and measured how much the vastus lateralis and the rectus femoris grows from each. And also a study or two showing that the rectus femoris doesn’t grow very much from squatting. Up until now, we’ve mostly had EMG studies and biomechanical reasoning to support everything I wrote above. Taken together, this probably means that if you wanted to train your rectus femoris and thus build your quadriceps as big and effectively as possible, you can’t rely on squatting-type exercises alone. For the rectus femoris to be worked, you’d need something like the leg extension, where your hip is fixated during the exercise, or some kind of kicking exercise where your hip is being flexed during knee extension, not extended. In this case, your vastus muscles are shortening, but your rectus femoris muscle length doesn’t really change, and it can’t contribute much to the work – because it is shortening in one end (the knee) but lengthening in the other (the hip). In classic leg exercises like the squat or leg press, you extend your knee while simultaneously extending your hip. This means that your vastus muscles are trained in pretty much any exercise where you extend your knee, but for your rectus femoris, things aren’t always that simple. The vastus muscles thus pass over only one joint (the knee), but the rectus femoris passes over two (the hip and knee). Note that vastus intermedius is hidden underneath the rectus femoris. Then, all four muscles join together into the quadriceps tendon that passes over your patella and inserts in your tibia. The three vastus (or vasti) muscles originate high on your thigh bone (your femur), but the rectus femoris originates on the front of your iliac bone (your pelvis). Your quadriceps has four different muscle heads: It is one of your most important muscles for moving around or in sports, and you cannot build a set of strong and impressive legs without them. The quadriceps is one of the largest muscles in your body. Vastus lateralis tended to grow more in the distal parts (25% and 50% of femur length) from squat training but grew more proximally (75% of femur length) from leg extensions.Leg extensions were found to provide superior muscle growth in the rectus femoris compared to squat training.A new study compared quad muscle growth from five weeks of squat vs.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |