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How to Build Bigger & Stronger Legs | Dr. Bret Contreras & Dr. Andrew Huberman


Chapters

0:0 Introduction to Dr. Brett Contreras
0:49 Importance of Adductors & Selective Hypertrophy
3:14 Mind-Muscle Connection & Training Techniques
6:11 Leg Curl Variations & Their Benefits
7:59 Stiff Leg Deadlifts & Proper Form
10:14 Leg Extensions for Rectus Femoris
12:46 Belt Squats & Their Advantages
14:2 Adjusting Squat Technique
14:16 Experimenting with Narrow Stance
14:34 Belt Squats & Ego Lifting
15:49 Adductor Exercises
19:52 Hip Thrusts for Glute Growth
22:25 Glute Medius Focus
24:0 Conclusion & Final Thoughts

Whisper Transcript | Transcript Only Page

00:00:00.000 | Hey everybody, I'm here with the glute guy, Dr. Brett Contreras, who's an expert in all
00:00:17.080 | things resistance training. So getting stronger, hypertrophy, and these days he's best known
00:00:22.480 | for selective hypertrophy, how to direct muscle growth to particular muscles. And he's called
00:00:28.480 | the glute guy because he's developed a lot of movements and he's really the expert in how to
00:00:34.040 | build stronger, and if you want, bigger glutes. So today we're going to talk about how to train
00:00:39.340 | your legs, everything from your calves all the way up, your quadriceps, your glutes, and your
00:00:43.820 | hamstrings. And adductors. And adductors, I was just reminded. Everyone forgets the adductors and
00:00:49.700 | today Brett will tell us why you cannot forget to train your adductors and he'll show you how to do
00:00:53.740 | that. And we're also going to focus on something that everybody cares a lot about, which is how to
00:00:59.000 | get selective hypertrophy of muscles that, at least in your mind, you would like larger. Either because
00:01:04.560 | of genetics, right? You were just born with genes, let's say, gave you a shorter muscle belly of, say,
00:01:09.440 | your hamstrings, that would be me. Whereas you might be glute dominant, that would also be me. Or
00:01:14.260 | you might have a hard time activating and growing your glutes, but your hamstrings tend to take over
00:01:18.660 | everything or your quads tend to take over everything. Today's discussion is also relevant
00:01:22.920 | if you happen to have an injury of any kind, which has had you favor certain muscle groups or created
00:01:28.100 | asymmetries in your body. For instance, I would say I have a pretty decent calf on this side, but you'll
00:01:32.940 | notice because of an injury years ago, I have a harder time engaging this calf. So it's smaller.
00:01:38.180 | And as a consequence, I need to train it differently to bring it back up. Today, we're going to go through
00:01:43.480 | a workout that you could apply to any weak points. So even though we're going to focus a bit on bringing up
00:01:48.580 | hamstrings and a particular calf in this case, for you, it might be glutes. For many people, it seems to be
00:01:54.580 | glutes. For you, it might be adductors. For you, it might be quads. Today's a really incredible opportunity
00:02:00.120 | for you to learn from the expert in resistance training, hypertrophy and strength training, how to bring up weak
00:02:05.800 | points or body parts that you would like larger. So I'm really excited to do this today. You're the man.
00:02:11.740 | Whenever someone reaches out, which happens from time to time and says, how can I grow my glutes? I
00:02:15.540 | would say, well, there's literally the glute guy. He is a doctor. He's a PhD. He knows everything you
00:02:21.220 | need to know about how to do this. And so I'm ready when you are. Let's do it. Am I the only person in
00:02:28.020 | the world that does tip raises religiously? You are, but knees over toes guy does. All right. So
00:02:32.940 | Andrew here is doing the tip raise. This is great for preventing shin splints and building the front
00:02:39.220 | muscle here, the tibialis anterior. Hopefully your gym has one of these. This shouldn't be neglected for
00:02:46.060 | overall health and mainly for running, for preventing shin splints. So typically what I do, I mean, you can
00:02:51.400 | tell me what I should change, is I'll come in here, throw this weight on, and I'll do maybe 15 or 20 just as a
00:02:56.960 | warm up to get some blood in there and to really just focus on engaging the muscle. And I never set
00:03:02.660 | the weight down. I'm always trying to get continuous tension. I mean, most people don't do this ever. So
00:03:08.260 | you start just doing it a couple of times a week, even with lighter weight, that's so much more than
00:03:13.580 | other people do. What's your general take on where to put your mind when you're training? If you're a
00:03:18.920 | powerlifter, I think the focus should be on visualizing your deadlift while you're doing like
00:03:24.440 | a hip thrust, visualize your deadlift lockout, or while you're doing belt squats, pretend you have
00:03:29.580 | a bar on your back and visualize the actual lift you're trying to make it transfer to. Focusing on
00:03:34.280 | the muscle and getting an intense mind muscle connection is invaluable. It's a necessity for
00:03:40.240 | lifting long-term in my opinion. Yeah. One of the reasons that I don't have mirrors in my gym is for
00:03:44.860 | that reason. Like I don't want to be focused on what I look like or anything. I just want to put my
00:03:48.900 | mind into the muscle that I'm training. The other thing that I've noticed, and this relates directly
00:03:52.660 | to so-called weak body parts, is that if you can contract a muscle really hard without any weight
00:03:59.940 | in your hand, you stand a better chance of being able to create hypertrophy for that muscle. So like
00:04:05.420 | the idea was, you know, if you can really cramp your bicep to the point where it's like, ah, that actually
00:04:10.120 | it not hurts, like you can go, ow, but you know, that it feels like a cramp. Then when you pick up the
00:04:16.560 | weight, you're trying to do that using the weight with added resistance. And certain things like my
00:04:21.940 | lats, my glutes, my quads, I can flex independently and isolate very easily. Certain muscles, it's
00:04:28.460 | harder to do that. My delts, for instance, which have always been a lagging body part. So I think
00:04:33.700 | there's real truth to the mind muscle connection as it relates to during the set.
00:04:38.200 | We did this in the past to grow the soleus, but the recent research is that you can grow
00:04:43.200 | the soleus from standing calf raises just so this is unnecessary. This is one of the main muscles
00:04:50.100 | that has consistently shown that a lengthened bias works better. When you reach failure with
00:04:57.800 | full range, you continue with partials just in the lengthened position. Finish off with a big stretch
00:05:03.320 | at the bottom, hold it for like five seconds. That's where it burns like crazy. Or just do the
00:05:08.900 | bottom range. Would you say you broke this? I broke that left foot three times and I can't
00:05:13.720 | contract the gas drop. When you have a market imbalance, there's different strategies. Do two sets
00:05:19.560 | for every one set. Do two sets on your left leg for every one set you do on the right leg. You can get
00:05:24.600 | equal muscle growth from doing low reps or high reps. In terms of the optimal number of sets per week,
00:05:30.440 | probably around 10 for most muscle groups. If you really want to specialize, you can do a lot more
00:05:36.840 | volume, but you kind of have to take away. So this is a really key point you're making. If I'm going to,
00:05:41.400 | let's say, try and bring up hamstrings or calves or glutes or chest or whatever it is, and I decide to
00:05:47.080 | increase my volume by 50%, something else has to give. Yeah. Instead of trying to grow everything all at once,
00:05:52.520 | you focus on one muscle at a time, maintain the others, and then alternate them. If you want
00:05:58.200 | total body hypertrophy, maybe one month you focus on chest and quads. The next month it's back and
00:06:05.480 | hamstrings. The next month it's glutes and adductors. They kind of go together. In theory, it could be
00:06:10.200 | better. Okay. So next up, Andrew is going to do the seated leg curl. What's your favorite leg curl?
00:06:15.080 | Lying leg curl. I like lying leg curls too, but there's one study by Mao. He showed
00:06:22.360 | that seated leg curls were more effective at growing the hamstrings than lying leg curls.
00:06:26.840 | Hamstrings seem to be a muscle that grows best in the stretch position. Not all of them are like that.
00:06:32.040 | If you're going to pick one leg curl most of the time, do seated, but with caveats. So this is one
00:06:38.520 | reason to maintain flexibility. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Try and get into this. It's pretty light. So when you do
00:06:43.560 | seated leg curls, what you want to do is make sure right at the top here that you feel it. Some people will
00:06:49.880 | like touch down prematurely. You want to get all the way to the top, make sure your butt's touching the
00:06:55.320 | pad. Okay. And then you could put something here like pushing you even to more hip flexion. Yeah,
00:07:01.000 | that's a big stretch. Yeah. Then come down. And then what I like with these, see how your butt's wanting
00:07:06.840 | to scoot forward. Stay. Yep. Okay. Come, come back. If Andrew's focusing on hamstrings this month,
00:07:13.320 | trying to really prioritize his hamstrings, then we want to use the biggest thing is to try to use
00:07:18.600 | progressive overload. It doesn't have to be the most weight you've ever lived. It just means
00:07:22.280 | you start out. And if, if we had, we have a 45, say we had a 45 and a 25, and you can get 12, 10, 8 on that.
00:07:30.200 | Then the next week you get 12, 10, 10. Then by week four, you're getting 12, 12, 12. That's progressive
00:07:37.000 | overload. It works well for a short stints. Then you hit a wall, but if you're always cycling around
00:07:42.600 | this whole premise of rotating your focus point, then it works really well that way. It's hard to
00:07:48.360 | emphasize to people just how, how stretched it feels. It feels like I'm trying to reach and touch under the
00:07:54.200 | arches of my feet from a standing position. You're doing weighted stretching here. That feels really
00:07:58.360 | good. Next up, we got the stiff leg deadlift. So I'm going to have Andrew get in position. First rep will
00:08:03.880 | be a conventional deadlift, a normal deadlift, deadlift the weight up. Then you organize yourself and get
00:08:08.280 | focused from the top. Basically put the bar at mid, like bisecting your shoe. So it's a couple inches
00:08:13.560 | off the shin, a little forward, a little more right there. I'd get a narrower stance. Okay. Now bend over and
00:08:19.960 | grab the bar. So you do three things at once. Slightly drop the hips, arch the back, and kind of pull the
00:08:25.880 | armpits towards your pockets, and then keep that neck. Some people say look up because it activates
00:08:31.480 | the erectors more. Some people say look down. Just try to keep it fairly neutral-ish. This feels neutral,
00:08:36.280 | and then just drag it up. So then your gaze will come up as you rise up, and just make sure the bar
00:08:41.000 | skims your legs the whole time through. It doesn't move away from your legs. Okay. I'll try and scratch
00:08:45.800 | them up your shins. Yep. Great. Keep the legs more straight. Focus more on a hamstring stretch. Yes.
00:08:54.760 | Good. Okay. Yes. Good. Two more. Great. Don't pause at the bottom. You're making it harder. To me,
00:09:04.200 | the safest way, and the way that makes most sense for hypertrophy, because when you round, you're actually
00:09:09.560 | shutting the erectors off a little bit. You're relying on the passive structures. You still produce torque,
00:09:15.400 | but it's the stretching of the muscles and the ligaments and things. The muscle activation goes
00:09:20.920 | down in the erectors. We're referring to spinal erectors. The spine erectors, to hold the arch,
00:09:27.000 | that's what they do. They erect the spine, keeping them erect. Then what you do is you train the muscles
00:09:32.840 | at a longer length. If you round over, you're kind of reducing the erector activation. You reduce some of
00:09:41.640 | the hip flexion that you go through. Can I ask one question? If people don't have access to a bar
00:09:46.120 | for stiff-legged deadlifts or for Romanians, will dumbbells suffice? Okay. I like dumbbells too, because
00:09:51.960 | you can kind of like, you don't have to have them straight. You can kind of have them angled a little
00:09:55.960 | bit. And then kind of drift a little. Yeah. Great. People love to criticize. They're going to be like, oh my
00:10:01.080 | good. Your deadlift form was, you don't, as a trainer, you don't pick people apart. You just
00:10:07.880 | always compliment. They're not going to like my deadlift form. No, you're going to get,
00:10:11.080 | we're both popular. We'll get a lot of hate. But the vasties, you've got three of them, medialis,
00:10:17.480 | laterals, and then the intermedius underneath. Then there's this muscle, the rectus femoris. It's
00:10:21.640 | actually a hip flexor and a knee extensor. It's kind of like a knife-shaped muscle. It's right here. It's the
00:10:26.200 | middle there. The rectum gets worked best through single joint knee extension. So these do work your
00:10:31.480 | vasties fine, but compound movements work the vasties better. But the compound movements do not work the
00:10:37.160 | rectus femoris as much. So you do leg extensions, especially for the rectus femoris, but studies
00:10:43.800 | show that you get more results with the rectum leaning back. Rectus femoris looks cool when you're
00:10:49.240 | leaning. All the muscles look cool. So you should do leg extensions because also they don't beat you up
00:10:53.480 | like the compounds do. It adds more maximum recoverable volume, but also works the rectum.
00:10:58.600 | But when you do these, make them the best for the rectum and lean back if you can.
00:11:02.760 | I go like, you know, three sets of 10 to 20. I go higher reps on these. 20 reps? 20 reps is cardio.
00:11:11.160 | You go so slow and everything. Try to be a little more explosive here because
00:11:14.440 | you're not trying to work the squeeze so much. Okay, so I'm just going to get it. We're going to get
00:11:18.920 | a groove here. We'll go for like 10 reps. So don't fight it maximally. Just get in a groove. Okay?
00:11:24.120 | One. Okay. Okay, that was two. I'm going to pick up. Three.
00:11:33.240 | Four. Five.
00:11:36.440 | Six. I know you don't like going. Let's just do 10. That's fine. Three more.
00:11:43.160 | Eight. Two more.
00:11:46.360 | Nine. Last one. Okay. Fight me. Good. Fight me. Good.
00:11:53.080 | Okay. Now hold it. Five seconds. One, two, three, four, five. Good.
00:11:58.920 | So when you do it that way and leaning back, some people will actually say, I felt it more in the
00:12:07.720 | rack fem. I actually, for the first time, actually felt it not just in here, but up in here. I feel it
00:12:12.200 | here and here. Yeah. Both places. But if you felt it up higher, that's... Oh, yeah. Normally I wouldn't
00:12:18.520 | feel it there. I think normally I would just feel it right in the teardrop-shaped muscle. So again,
00:12:23.800 | you do this this way because it is the way to bias the rack fem and it's a cool-looking muscle when you
00:12:31.960 | get lean. If you're training yourself and you did want to accentuate the eccentric, you could go two up,
00:12:39.160 | one down. We go up with two legs. Oh, yeah. Down with one leg, which this is too heavy to do.
00:12:46.280 | So next up, we've got the belt squat. Here's what I'll say about the belt squat. I love to see more
00:12:51.320 | powerlifters using this now because it transfers well to the squat. I always noticed when I was
00:12:57.320 | hammering belt squats, it trains your quads in a fashion very similar to squats,
00:13:01.880 | but it does not beat you up. You get significantly reduced spinal loading. So you can add what I like to
00:13:08.280 | say penalty-free volume. It increases your maximum recoverable volume. For quads, it is top-notch.
00:13:15.880 | Well, should I say for vasties, it's top-notch. It doesn't work the rectus femoris much, but here's
00:13:21.000 | what's cool about this. One study showed you don't get as much glute and adductor growth... You don't
00:13:25.720 | get as much glute and adductor growth with belt squats than you do with back squats. With the barbell,
00:13:31.800 | it has you use a little more posterior chains. So this is a way to isolate the vasties a little more,
00:13:36.680 | but don't feel the need to go as to grasp.
00:13:44.440 | Yeah. You're going below parallel.
00:13:47.080 | I guess I do pause at the bottom. Yeah. And that makes it harder with the weight you're using.
00:13:54.760 | People overemphasize, but I would say bring the feet in just a little closer.
00:13:58.520 | Okay. And then flare the knees out a little more as you come down
00:14:02.040 | so that they're tracking over the toes. So like right there. And it just feels weird at the moment
00:14:06.520 | because it's a new neural groove, but that's the way you teach it. And then over time, you can stray from that.
00:14:12.920 | Yeah. Okay. Let's rack it. If you want to experiment a little more,
00:14:18.280 | let's go a little narrower stance. So this is going to be more of a quads and stay more upright.
00:14:23.000 | Okay. So back straight up and down. Back straighter and then let the knees jut forward.
00:14:27.640 | Push with my toes. Yep.
00:14:29.800 | Deep, deep, deep. Yep. So everyone, when they do belt squats, it's fun to play the ego game.
00:14:39.480 | If I had you put it on the very last one and did you stand at the very back and sit back when you
00:14:44.840 | do it, it makes it so much easier. You'd use 10 plates probably. Okay. Good.
00:14:49.240 | To be honest, I would rather use less weight and get more out of it. Yeah. Yeah.
00:14:54.920 | Yeah.
00:14:54.920 | I was going to say, cause then where am I going to go? Eight plates, nine plates, 10 plates.
00:14:58.760 | So, you know, the idea for me would be to use the least amount of weight to still feel like I'm
00:15:04.840 | training hard. No. So that's this way. Like, yeah. Oh no, this is brutal.
00:15:08.360 | It'll stay more upright and go deep as hell. And then, but your way is also good too. You don't,
00:15:14.520 | you don't want all your sets to have your knees going way past the toes. Sometimes that can lead
00:15:19.000 | to more stress on the patella. So sometimes, so I would say alternate between the two.
00:15:23.560 | How many sets and reps would you recommend? Let's say I warm up and I'm, I'm training alone and I do,
00:15:30.040 | and I do, um, let's say two or three really hard sets of leg extensions. So pre-exhaust and come over
00:15:35.960 | here and I do maybe one or two warmups to get the form right. Yeah. I do three and three. Okay.
00:15:41.320 | Um, you, you could do four, but then it's like, you want to train your hamstrings too.
00:15:45.400 | I do think you should start doing glutes and adductors, but yeah. What would you suggest
00:15:50.280 | for adductors? I'll show you, we're going to do an adductor exercise, but, um, but the adductors look
00:15:56.440 | awesome. That's the most slept on muscle there is with men. Um, but the thing is when you do deep,
00:16:01.640 | not belt squats or hack squats, as much as back squats and leg press, you can make those very hip
00:16:09.160 | dominant. The, the pendulum squat, the hack squat, the belt squat, these are ways to make it more knee
00:16:14.440 | dominant, but the, the hip dominant compound movements like leg press with your feet higher.
00:16:21.560 | But even I would say even like leg press in a quad dominant fashion, look at bodybuilders.
00:16:26.520 | They have huge adductors. They don't do the seated hip adduction machine. They squat deep. They do.
00:16:32.760 | Well, I wouldn't say they barbell squat deep. They do leg press deep or sumo is the best way to work
00:16:37.400 | your adductors. Plotkin 2023 compared squats to hip thrusts. And it showed that squats grew the
00:16:43.000 | adductors better. They grew the glutes equal, but squats grew the quads and adductors better. Neither
00:16:49.480 | grew the hamstrings or glute medius. So squats and hip thrusts don't grow the hamstrings or the glute
00:16:54.040 | medius. They grow the glutes equally well, but squats grow the quads and the adductors about
00:17:00.120 | two and a half times more. If it's like, say, say 4% compared to like 10% or what about goblet squat?
00:17:06.200 | So if I were hip, you can make them hip dominant. So yeah, belt squats have your vasties covered.
00:17:12.280 | If you want adductor and glute growth. Yeah. And I think you shouldn't limit yourself and say,
00:17:16.920 | I'm ham. I'm, I'm quad, glute dominant. The thing is my damn glutes grow from anything. Like,
00:17:22.440 | like my glutes are going to grow bigger. I'm bigger. So go down like this. Yep. And then kind of think
00:17:32.200 | of the seated hip adduction machine. Oh, right. Okay. You're trying to mimic that, but with body weight.
00:17:38.440 | Okay. Okay. Come up, squeeze, come down, feel the stretch. Yep. Back.
00:17:45.320 | Come down. Yep. My rule of thumb is if someone has not done these, you don't go to failure. You just do one set
00:17:59.000 | because tomorrow you'll feel this for some reason, adduction and calf raises tend to get people really
00:18:09.000 | sore. If you haven't done it in a while. All right. Okay. Go for it. Make it. Yep.
00:18:17.400 | You're trying to feel it in the stretch. So come down, come down and then squeeze. So you're sitting
00:18:24.200 | into it. Okay. See that. So I stretch it, squeeze it. Yep. Gotcha. These are deceptively difficult.
00:18:32.200 | Yeah. We have the optimal leg routine here. If we had done a hip dominant squat, say we'd have done barbell
00:18:39.960 | squats. Yep. Or leg press, then we might be able to skip on the adductors. But since we did
00:18:47.160 | belt squat, we need an adductor movement. We don't have a seated hip adduction machine. So we're going
00:18:51.880 | to try and do it with barbell. Yeah. You know, it's going to be your fault that my jeans don't fit
00:18:56.120 | tomorrow. All right. Okay. There we go. Now I feel it. Now I feel it. Turn out. Yep. So it's almost
00:19:04.440 | like you want to like kick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good too. Okay. Yep. Ah, yeah. Don't go to failure.
00:19:12.840 | You'll be so sore tomorrow. Good. Now I feel it. Yeah. Okay. I'd be done.
00:19:16.680 | And you kind of feel yourself release here a little bit and kind of, yeah, get that stretch.
00:19:25.240 | Good. So this is just a Copenhagen variation. And it's, I like having the whole shin on the bench because it
00:19:34.200 | it's easier on the knees. Yeah. You might feel that tomorrow. Cool. Yeah. Okay. Two more exercises.
00:19:39.320 | Great. Thank you. Two more. So we got, we got calves and tibialis out of the way. Yep. We got
00:19:45.240 | hamstrings. We got quads. We got adductors. Now we just have glutes. Great. Okay. But my glutes are
00:19:50.680 | already smoked. Okay. So as a trainer, when someone learns the hip thrust, I tend to have you just get to
00:19:59.240 | the top position. So what does this do? This is going to work the glutes. Okay. Now you could say what the research
00:20:03.960 | says about glutes is you can grow the glutes equally as effectively doing squats or hip thrusts.
00:20:09.960 | So if you squatted hard, the belt squat is a knee dominant squat. If you did back squats,
00:20:16.280 | you could have, you could have checked off glutes and hamstrings, but you didn't. You did belt squats,
00:20:21.240 | which were more vasties. That's why we added in the adductor exercise. And that's why we're adding in hip
00:20:25.480 | thrusts. When people get back pain with hip thrusts, it's usually because they hyperextend,
00:20:29.960 | meaning like this. I feel that. So this might be your starting point. If you were going to start hip
00:20:34.440 | thrusts, I always teach people body weight first, tap down, come up, push tall, push tall with your glutes.
00:20:40.840 | Okay. Come down, tap, push tall. Boom. Come down, tap, come up tall. Boom. That was a good, yes.
00:20:53.080 | So those last pulses are brutal. So what happens when people start hip thrusting? Good job. They're
00:21:04.520 | strong in a flexed position. That doesn't mean they're strong in an extended position. So I definitely feel
00:21:10.440 | it really well in the glute ham insertion too. And then when you strengthen this, think about when you
00:21:17.800 | run. When you run, you touch down about here and then your center mass passes over the body. That
00:21:24.760 | running is associated with more hip neutral postures. And the research on hip thrusts versus squats for
00:21:32.920 | sprinting, hip thrusts appear to be superior for sprinting speed compared to squats. The research
00:21:39.000 | on horizontal versus vertical plyos is the same. Well, let me ask you this. Horizontal plyos tend to be
00:21:44.760 | better for sprint speed than vertical plyos. And it's because there's this element of
00:21:52.520 | foot touching down. Like your ground contact is your window to really influence whether you accelerate,
00:21:57.960 | decelerate or maintain. So when your foot touches down, you need to have that angle specific strength
00:22:05.080 | and power to propel you forward. I mean, it's good for function. It's good for gait. It's good for,
00:22:10.120 | but people will start telling me I'm, I'm taking longer strides. I feel my glutes working more when I,
00:22:16.040 | when I run, I think it's good for longer distances too. Like not just sprinting, like for, it's just
00:22:22.600 | good to do for function. So. Well, that was awesome. Well, one more. We got a glute medius.
00:22:27.080 | One more. So the glute medius is on the side here. It's this strip right here, but it's actually kind
00:22:34.200 | of broad. So you've got like anterior, middle and posterior division to it. I think most women should
00:22:40.600 | focus on the posterior division of the glute med because that will give them the shelf more. What they
00:22:44.920 | want though, like the, the, the, the, the shelf from the side view. What we know is that, uh,
00:22:50.280 | squats and hip thrusts don't build the glute medius at all. That was shown in plotkin 2023.
00:22:55.880 | When you start training your hips, all the muscles in the hips, we should probably have done a hip
00:23:00.440 | flexion movement too. Like a single leg, straight leg sit up, for example, off of a bench with the
00:23:06.200 | kettlebell on the ground to work the hip flexors in a lengthened position. You're shifting into it,
00:23:11.800 | feel the stretch and then shift away from it. Boom. So it's like this.
00:23:17.000 | And then we can put a plate right here. You can put a plate right there.
00:23:22.840 | Boom. Get out. Separate those legs. So shift, pop, shift, pop. Yes. That's it. Shift, pop,
00:23:37.560 | shift, stretch it, squeeze it. You're trying to tilt laterally this way. And then at the top,
00:23:43.480 | tilt ladder that way. That's all glute med. Boom. Yep.
00:23:53.960 | That feels lit up here and here like nobody's business. All right. Well, Brett, thank you so
00:24:01.560 | much for taking me through a proper leg workout, tibs, calves, hamstrings with multiple movements,
00:24:07.880 | quads, glutes, and adductors and adductors. I really appreciate the clarity of your explanations,
00:24:16.600 | how detailed you are, when details matter without clouding everything with excessive detail. You're
00:24:21.880 | focused on what works in the gym, what's worked for your clients in essentially every single client
00:24:27.800 | that you've posted has gotten spectacular results. And not all of them started from a genetically gifted
00:24:33.000 | place. In fact, many of them didn't. And it's just spectacular to see. Obviously you walk the walk. I'm
00:24:37.720 | definitely feeling it from the ankles all the way up to my lower abs from what we did today. But I feel
00:24:44.360 | also fresh. I feel like I could certainly come back. And for me, I'm a kind of slow, slow recover. So
00:24:51.000 | probably in four or five days and hit them again, I probably couldn't resist putting on a little bit
00:24:56.600 | more weight. But I have to say that it was really the attention to contracting the muscles of interest
00:25:03.240 | throughout the movement, stretching when it was needed, contracting when it was needed,
00:25:07.000 | that for me basically made me aware of muscles that I didn't even know that I had. I knew they were
00:25:11.800 | there, but I didn't, I hadn't felt them work like I did today. So once again, thank you so much for the
00:25:17.640 | explanation. I feel like I've been gifted an incredible tutorial today that I'm going to carry forward
00:25:22.840 | for my next 50 years of resistance training. And also everybody, you'll want to check out the full
00:25:28.440 | length Huberman lab podcast that I did with Dr. Brett Contreras about basically everything we
00:25:33.400 | talked about today and much more. There are a ton of practical tools in there. We discuss the underlying
00:25:38.600 | science. We talk about how to select and build a routine that's customized for your specific needs
00:25:44.520 | at different stages of your life, depending on whether or not you want hypertrophy, strength,
00:25:48.920 | a combination of both, whether or not you're trying to grow your glutes more. After all,
00:25:52.680 | he is Brett Contreras, Dr. Brett Contreras, the glute guy. And if you're trying to bring up any weak
00:25:58.920 | or injured or asymmetric body part or body parts, that's the conversation to listen to. And as always,
00:26:04.600 | thanks everybody for listening in. And since he's a scientist and I'm a scientist and we're talking
00:26:09.320 | about training, but it's grounded in real science. Thank you for your interest in science.