Building significant muscle in your lower body can be challenging, but by using scientifically-backed methods, you can speed up your progress. If you’re looking to double your muscle growth for your legs, glutes, and calves, this article covers three strategies that can get you there faster: utilising progressive overload with strategic variations, focusing on eccentric overload, and incorporating high-frequency training.
Each method is grounded in research and practical application. Let’s dive into how these techniques can work for you.
1. Progressive Overload with Strategic Variations
Progressive overload is one of the most foundational principles in muscle growth. This means continually increasing the demands placed on the muscles, forcing them to adapt by growing stronger and bigger. But to truly accelerate growth, you need to pair progressive overload with exercise variations.
Why Progressive Overload Works
Progressive overload works because it forces your muscles to adapt to increasing stress. When you lift progressively heavier weights or increase the number of repetitions, you cause microtears in your muscle fibres. As your body repairs these tears, it adds more muscle mass to handle future stress.
A study by Schoenfeld et al. (2016) highlighted that progressive overload is the key driver for muscle hypertrophy (muscle growth). Without it, the body has no reason to build more muscle because it’s not being challenged beyond its current capacity.
However, to force growth at a faster rate, you must continually challenge your muscles in new ways, which is where strategic variations come into play.
Implementing Strategic Variations for Faster Gains
Changing the type of stimulus on your lower body muscles ensures that they don’t adapt and plateau. For instance, if you’ve been doing barbell squats consistently, adding variations like Bulgarian split squats, front squats, or goblet squats will challenge your muscles in different ways. These variations activate different motor units and emphasise different parts of the lower body musculature, which promotes more balanced muscle growth.
A study by Fonseca et al. (2014) demonstrated that using multiple exercise variations can lead to greater muscle hypertrophy compared to sticking with a single exercise. The research showed that participants who incorporated variations in their training programme experienced more significant gains in muscle size.
To utilise this method effectively, change the exercises you perform every 4-6 weeks. For example:
- Week 1-4: Back squats, Romanian deadlifts, and leg presses.
- Week 5-8: Bulgarian split squats, sumo deadlifts, and hack squats.
- Week 9-12: Front squats, hip thrusts, and walking lunges.
By continuously altering your lower body exercises, you ensure that your muscles are forced to adapt to new stimuli, accelerating muscle growth.
Practical Takeaway
Strategic variation combined with progressive overload leads to greater activation of different muscle fibres, pushing your lower body muscles to grow faster. Ensure you change exercises every 4-6 weeks and gradually increase weight or reps to maximise your gains.
2. Focus on Eccentric Overload
Another highly effective method for accelerating lower body muscle growth is emphasising the eccentric (lowering) phase of an exercise. Eccentric contractions are known to produce more muscle damage compared to concentric (lifting) contractions, which results in greater muscle hypertrophy.
Why Eccentric Overload Works
When you lower the weight during exercises like squats or deadlifts, your muscles are lengthening under tension. This process causes more microscopic tears in the muscle fibres compared to the lifting phase, which subsequently leads to more muscle repair and growth.
Research by Hedayatpour and Falla (2015) confirmed that eccentric training is more effective for promoting muscle hypertrophy and strength gains compared to concentric training alone. The study found that eccentric-focused training caused more muscle damage and led to greater long-term adaptations.
How to Implement Eccentric Overload
To incorporate eccentric overload into your training, focus on slowing down the lowering phase of each rep. For example, if you’re performing a squat, take 3-5 seconds to lower yourself down, then lift the weight explosively on the way up. This method will maximise muscle damage in your lower body and force faster growth.
Here’s how you can apply eccentric overload to common lower body exercises:
- Squats: Lower yourself in 3-5 seconds and explode upwards.
- Romanian Deadlifts: Slowly lower the bar to your shins over 4 seconds and lift it back up quickly.
- Leg Press: Lower the weight for 4 seconds and press it back with force.
You can also use techniques like “negative training”, where you focus entirely on the eccentric portion of the lift. For example, you might have a spotter help you lift the weight and then control the lowering phase on your own.
The Science Behind Eccentric Training
In a study by Franchi et al. (2017), it was shown that eccentric training resulted in a more significant increase in muscle fibre size compared to concentric training. This indicates that focusing on the eccentric phase of lifts could lead to faster hypertrophy in the lower body muscles.
Practical Takeaway
Incorporating eccentric overload into your lower body training is a proven method to accelerate muscle growth. Slow down the lowering phase of your exercises, and you’ll notice more muscle damage and faster recovery, leading to larger muscles over time.
3. High-Frequency Training for Faster Gains
High-frequency training, which involves training a muscle group more often throughout the week, can drastically increase the rate of muscle growth. Instead of training your lower body just once or twice per week, increasing the frequency to 3-4 times can lead to faster muscle growth by providing more stimulation for your muscles to grow.
Why High-Frequency Training Works
The key to muscle growth is providing sufficient volume and stimulus. If you train a muscle more frequently, you give it more opportunities to grow. However, volume must be managed carefully to prevent overtraining. Studies show that as long as total weekly volume is equated, higher training frequency can result in better muscle growth outcomes.
A study by Schoenfeld et al. (2018) found that high-frequency training led to more significant muscle growth compared to low-frequency training, provided that volume was kept consistent. By spreading the total volume across more days, you ensure more regular stimulation and less muscle soreness, allowing you to train more effectively.
How to Implement High-Frequency Training
To apply high-frequency training to your lower body, split your weekly workout volume across three or four sessions. For example:
- Monday: Squats, Romanian deadlifts, lunges.
- Wednesday: Bulgarian split squats, leg presses, calf raises.
- Friday: Deadlifts, hip thrusts, walking lunges.
- Saturday: Front squats, sumo deadlifts, leg curls.
By spreading the volume over multiple days, your lower body muscles get regular stimulation, which forces quicker adaptations. Ensure each session is kept to moderate intensity to avoid overtraining.
The Science Behind High-Frequency Training
Research supports the notion that higher training frequency can lead to greater hypertrophy. A study by Gomes et al. (2019) showed that training a muscle group more frequently can lead to faster gains in both muscle size and strength. This is because frequent training sessions provide more opportunities for protein synthesis, which is critical for muscle growth.
Practical Takeaway
By incorporating high-frequency training into your lower body routine, you can stimulate your muscles more often, leading to faster growth. Just ensure that you manage your volume and intensity to avoid overtraining, and spread your exercises throughout the week for maximum effect.
Conclusion
If you’re looking to double the rate of your lower body muscle growth, incorporating these three scientifically backed strategies can significantly enhance your results. Progressive overload with strategic variations keeps your muscles guessing and prevents plateaus. Focusing on eccentric overload forces more muscle damage and repair, while high-frequency training increases the frequency of stimulation, driving quicker adaptations. By implementing these methods consistently, you can achieve faster gains and build a more muscular lower body.
Key Takeaways Table
Bibliography
Franchi, M.V., Reeves, N.D. & Narici, M.V., 2017. Skeletal muscle remodeling in response to eccentric vs. concentric loading: morphological, molecular, and metabolic adaptations. Frontiers in Physiology, 8, p.447.
Fonseca, R.M., Roschel, H., Tricoli, V., de Souza, E.O., Wilson, J.M., Laurentino, G.C. & Aihara, A.Y., 2014. Changes in exercises are more effective than in loading schemes to improve muscle strength. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 28(11), pp.3085-3092.
Gomes, G.K., Franco, C.M., Tibana, R.A., Vasconcelos, A.B., Costa, G.D.C.T., Santana, F.D.S. & Navalta, J.W., 2019. Comparison of high- and low-frequency resistance training on muscle strength and hypertrophy. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 33(1), pp.17-26.
Hedayatpour, N. & Falla, D., 2015. Physiological and neural adaptations to eccentric exercise: mechanisms and considerations for training. BioMed Research International, 2015, p.193741.
Schoenfeld, B.J., Ogborn, D. & Krieger, J.W., 2016. Dose-response relationship between weekly resistance training volume and increases in muscle mass: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Sports Sciences, 34(18), pp.1839-1848.
Schoenfeld, B.J., Grgic, J., Ogborn, D. & Krieger, J.W., 2018. Strength and hypertrophy adaptations between low- vs. high-load resistance training: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 32(12), pp.3497-3508.
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