Hey what's up? It's Lee Hayward here from LeeHayward.com and I am in training legs now with Patricia. This is our first workout now after Christmas. It's Boxing Day right now and the first exercise we are doing is the Hack Squat. Normally, I am not a big fan of hack squats, traditional hack-squat machine, but the gym that we are training at here has a Hammer Strength Hack Squat and surprisingly, this hack squat variation is a lot easier on the knees compared to most traditional hack squats. So if you have a chance to train at a gym that has the Hammer Strength Hack Squat, I highly recommend it, especially if you find the normal hack squats hurt on the knees like a lot of people do. And Patricia is getting set up there now to do our set, so I'll just run over there.
Again, it looks kind of similar to a regular hack squat, but just the angle of this machine, it doesn't place as much stress on the knees. You are kind of in a more upright position; it's not really like a 45 degree angle hack squat. So it's a great alternative to regular squats. You get full support throughout your back there and it really isolates the legs, especially on the quads.
Nice, good job! I am going to run in and do another set there now.
We'll move on training some hamstrings and we are going to be doing stiff-leg deadlifts off the box to this one, and this is my favorite hamstring exercise. I am going to have hamstring with full range of motion and have fairly heavy weights. And I'd always like to use a chalk to help reinforce my grip when I am doing this. I don't have the bar slipping out of my hands, when I still got few reps left in my hamstrings. Sometimes I'll use an alternate grip to help reinforce my grip as well, and that's just has one grip, one hand facing forward, the other hand facing backward and that allows it so as the bar is rolling out one hand, it's rolling into the other and vice versa, so you'd be able to hold on the bar longer. For this set, I think I will be able to just use a regular overhand grip but again, if my grip does fatigue, I will switch to the alternate grip. And I am going to take shoulder grip on the bar.
Patricia is setting up to do her set of stiff-leg deadlifts, and she's going to be doing them out of the box, as I was. This is just a while as you get a deeper stretch in the bottom, because you can do down without the bar and the plates hitting the floor. Alright, so she gets her knees slightly bent. Good job and her back arched, perfect form. Just kind of like touching your toes while holding on to a barbell, very similar, maintaining and arching your back, slight bend in the knees, great job.
Awesome stuff! I don't want to train calves but getting ready for bodybuilding show and I don't want to leave anything to chance. I am going to throw in some calf work. I am going to be doing, have some leg press calf raise for this workout. This is a unique calf raise variation. I don't normally do this one; normally I'll do a standing calf raise or a seated calf raise but this is -- like it hits the calves from a different angle, kind of stretches your legs out in a unique way. So that's why I'll look to throw it in from time to time, just to mix it up to provide some unique muscle stimulation. And how we'll be doing this to come to my feet and after that foot plate and I can do this. Just I am going to flip it and most leg press allows you to do this. Right there, slight press on the knees right here and the toes presses.
And that's a way I like to do my calf raises, I'll do full range of motion reps and then I'll just finish off doing these little short upper reps in the mid range, finish up and then take a passive point failure. So that's great way to really bring out the calves and I am going to be training my calves a little bit now for my pre-contest, leaving up to the 2010 Atlantic Canadian Bodybuilding Championships, just help bringing the hardness and the definition, I don't want to leave it the chance. Alright, Patricia is getting ready to do her set of seated leg-press calf raises. So again, you can notice her heels hanging off the edge of the footplate and she is going to be pressing up with her toes, here you go.
It's not acute range of motion here, but you are fully contract in the calves. Good job. And again with this one, you should be able to just push this lid upwards, still on the safety pins meaning you don't lift the pins up like you would when you were doing your regular leg presses and I highly recommend that if at all possible because just in case your feet did slip off the foot plate, you want something there to catch this lid. Alright, great job.
So that concludes our leg workout. We started off with this many warm-up sets because we felt we needed for each exercise and then we moved on doing three working sets of ten reps. If there are any workout video that you would like to see added to this channel, please let me know. Just go to my website at LeeHayward.com and click on the Video Request link that's in the Menu bar. Right here on this page, you'll be able to submit your video ideas via my web form.
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