Bulking up around the knees

I've been working for about a month now to increase the strength in my legs. They're unreasonably weak, and I've been avoiding doing any elaborate lifting routines with my arms so I could wait for my legs to catch up. Just this past week, I changed the structure of my leg routine to more effectively build strength and mass in my legs. Whereas previously I had been doing sets of 8-10 squats, deadlifts, knee extensions and hamstring curls, I'm now going to be doing sets of 4-6 on the squats, and 6-8 on the deadlifts. I've never tried doing a routine with fewer reps and higher weight, so I'm interested to see if I make better progress like this.

I'm wondering though: Are there some special lifts or techniques I can use to specifically bulk up around my knees? Right now, my legs are pretty scrawny compared to my upper body. Though my upper quadriceps and my butt are about the right size in relation to the rest of my body, everything from my lower quadriceps down is extremely thin (and one of the reasons I haven't been working on my upper body is because I'm already top-heavy, and wanted to gain some mass in my lower body before I started becoming even more top-heavy).

Is there a special way to do squats or leg extensions to target the lower quads? Is there something else I should be doing?
 
Something fun you might try is the 20 rep "breathing" squats. You'll basically take your 10RM but do 20 reps. After your perform the 10 reps, the rest will basically be singles but you do not rack the bar. You'll take a couple of deep breathes before each additional rep until you hit 20 and then you're done. 1 set is sufficient.

Next, hit some deadlifts or Romanian deadlifts in the 3-4X6-8 range.

Third, hit some 1 legged leg presses in the 3X10 rep range.

You can finish up, if you want, with some leg extensions. If you're only working the legs out once a week, then go ahead and do 3 sets to failure. If you're working legs out more than once a week-no failure.
 
I'm not too hot on one-legged leg presses. Hard to explain; my body just isn't designed well for doing legpresses, I prefer squats.

I'm curious, why will the above routine help me focus on bulking around my knees? I'll probably give it a try sometime this week or next, it sounds interesting.

Thanks!
 
The squat and deadlift are the primary movements that are going to build mass around your hamstrings and quads. I'm not a leg extension person but you've been using them and many use them with great success in building up the quads, they're not to bad of a finishing move. The 20 rep squats are notorious for being a mass and strength builder of the legs.

You can substitute the 1 legged leg press for any uni-lateral movement as you'll get a greater muscle fiber recruitment from doing any movement uni-lateral as opposed to bi-lateral.
 
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