Are barbell squats really the BEST exercise for growing bigger legs?!

While they certainly are a great exercise, they demand a lot from your core and back muscles to help stabilize the weight. This isn’t a bad thing, but if your main goal is to grow bigger quads, then it can be an issue. The reason being is for some people, their lower back muscles end up fatiguing first, before their quads have reached anywhere near their limit.

This is where machines can come in handy! Exercises like the hack squat, with the use of the back support, help minimize the stability demands of the exercise, and as a result you’ll be able to truly push your quads closer to their limits without having to worry about other muscles fatiguing first. If your gym doesn’t have a hack squat machine, consider using a smith machine squat instead.

And if you’re concerned about machines not working as well as free weights at building muscle, recent studies have shown them to be just as effective.

So if you’re not growing very well from squats, give these exercises a try and see if they help. And give me a follow for more tips just like this!