How to Maximize Leg Gains
How to Maximize Leg Gains
Jay Cutler Reveals How He Blasted His Sick Quads & Hams
In any discussion of best ever legs the name of four-time Mr. Olympia, Jay Cutler, will be part of the debate. Those legs were not built overnight and here we discover how he started out and where he ended up.
The Kid From Worcester With the Huge Legs
The year was 1992, and I was working for American Sports Network out in Rosemead, California. We produced the one-hour TV show “American Muscle Magazine” for ESPN, and my boss Lou Zwick was the number-one talent scout for up-and-coming bodybuilding stars in the world. Joe Weider had nothing on Lou. Anybody who was anybody was on that show, often long before they made it big-time. Every day, packets of photos and VHS tapes came in the mail from both the athletes themselves and others around the country and beyond, who hoped to get their discoveries on our show. One day we got some shots of a 19-year-old from the farm town of Sterling, Massachusetts, outside of Worcester and about an hour west of Boston. I always took particular interest in bodybuilders from my home state, having left there for California two years before. I’d gotten to know two other guys Lou discovered and put on the show many times, Mike Matarazzo and Paul DeMayo, and right away I knew this big blond kid might very well be the next big thing to come out of the Bay State.
At that time, striped tights were the height of meathead fashion. If you had chicken legs, the vertical stripes were a bad idea as they only made them look skinnier. But if you had some serious quad meat and especially if you had a decent outer sweep to your quads, those tights made your wheels appear pretty freaky. In the photos, the mop-headed Cutler had those lines bowing outward in almost a perfect semi-circle shape. All you really noticed about Jay back then were his wide shoulders and those ridiculous legs. When Lou informed me Jay had just started training a year before, I recall saying “yeah, right!” It just didn’t seem possible that anyone could build legs like that in just a year. The next summer, Jay won the Heavyweight title at the NPC Teenage Nationals and lost the Overall to the Light Heavy, yet another kid with insanely large legs— that was Branch Warren. Who could have predicted that Jay would go on to win four Mr. Olympia titles (so far), and that Jay and Branch would finish first and second 16 years later at the Olympia?
Destined for Giant Wheels
Jay played football and ran track all through high school, so I wrongly assumed that when he claimed to have only started training on his 18th birthday, he was conveniently leaving out a few years in the school weight room (a lot of bodybuilders I talk to do this). But really and truly, when I saw those photos of Jay, he had only touched his first weight a little over a year before. “All the running for sports and also working for my brother’s construction company had to have helped build a little bit of a base, but I never had small legs,” Jay remembers. “For instance, the other kids wore straight-leg jeans, and I could never fit into those.”
The untapped growth potential in his legs didn’t take long to manifest. When he first got under a squat rack, he struggled with 135. A year later, Jay was doing good reps with 500-600 pounds. His bodyweight had soared from 185 to 245— and a lot of that bulk was from the waist down. “All I was really doing back then was a lot of squats, leg presses, and hack squats,” he tells us. And he also adds that his legs really aren’t as big as they seem to be. “A lot of it is illusion, because genetically I have that crazy outer sweep.”
Jay hasn’t bothered to measure his thighs in years, but some might be surprised at the number. “I think they were only 30 or 31, honestly,” he says. This just proves that shape and detail, two qualities Jay’s legs have in abundance, go a long way in a visual sport. Just as a shredded and peaked 17-inch biceps can appear to be bigger than a 20-incher with as much definition as a lump of Play-Doh, Jay’s legs clearly defy their actual dimensions. I mean really— other than a handful of other pros like Branch, Kai, and maybe Erik Fankhouser, whose legs look as big as Jay’s?
Though Jay gives plenty of credit to his genes, he’s also put in two decades of ball-busting work to develop the Mr. Olympia wheels you see today, with the type of deep splits and striations that you only get from thousands of grueling workouts. Per Bernal captured one of these workouts right after Jay’s fourth Mr. Olympia victory for MD, so now we can go over a typical blueprint for a leg day with Jay.
1) Leg Extensions
Even though Jay’s leg workouts aren’t usually ever exactly the same, he does believe in starting each one with leg extensions. This initial warm-up consists of 3 or 4 sets of 12 reps, with a continuous piston-like motion; no pausing to squeeze at the top. “This is totally to get some blood flowing in the quads and warm everything up,” notes Jay. Later, after a couple of heavy compound movements, Cutler returns to leg extensions; but treats them this time as a mass-builder. “There’s a misconception that extensions have no value for building size,” he observes. “Supposedly they are only for shaping and detail, but if you work hard on them that’s not true at all.” And Jay does work hard, using as much weight as he can for 4 sets of 12 reps with a strong squeeze at the top. A training partner often helps him complete the motion for the last couple reps, so Jay can hold the contracted position and flex the quads.
2) Leg Press
Cutler’s first compound exercise for the quads is usually the leg press, as it offers total control. One thing you will never see this multiple Olympia champion do is load up the machine with all the weight it can hold, only to do half-reps. Instead, Jay goes deep on each rep, often slowing the descent down to emphasize the negative stroke after a few reps. He’ll also pause at the bottom to eliminate any momentum, as well as to be certain there’s no bounce at all. Any of you out there with knee pain know how it can wreak havoc on everything from your leg workouts, to your cardio, to everyday life. Jay Cutler doesn’t have time for knee pain when he’s trying to hold on to the biggest title in our sport! After a couple warm-ups or “feel sets” as Jay likes to call them, he knocks out 4 sets of 10 reps. “I’m after more fullness in the legs, and that’s why I keep the reps there,” he adds.
3) Hack Squats
Hacks are a frequent successor to the leg press. “I like to use hack squats to target the upper quads as well as the teardrop area over the knee,” Jay says. It’s also a strong exercise for Jay. Though he doesn’t intentionally try to use a lot of weight— and also keeping in mind that some machines feel a lot heavier than others— Cutler has never met a hack squat he couldn’t do quality reps with using any less than five plates a side. The reps are at 10 for his off-season sets, but as he gets deep into his contest-prep he’ll raise that figure to 12-13 on average, just to play it safe.
4) Smith Machine Squats
Doing squats this late in the leg workout would be unthinkable for most bodybuilders, because the fatigue level at this point makes it impossible to handle maximum weights. But Jay Cutler isn’t even remotely interested or concerned with using “X” amount of weight on his squats. He’s got nothing to prove and nobody to impress. And if anyone wants to talk shit that he doesn’t squat heavy enough, Jay’s incredible quads should be sufficient to do the talking for him— and I bet they would say “Shut the fuck up!”
Even back when Jay was squatting earlier in his workouts and slapping 5-6 plates on each side of the bar, he was always after a specific feeling in his quads. “I used to put a board under my heels, or 10-pound plates, because I found that helped me shift the stress more to my quads and away from my glutes and hams,” he says. These days he’s perfectly in tune with his mind-muscle connection, and making the quads do the work is second nature. Jay also now prefers the Smith machine for squats, as there’s no need to expend energy keeping the bar balanced. He also does things like dead stops in the hole and slow negatives, to make his squats that much more effective at stimulating the quads.
5) Seated Leg Curls
Jay used to split up legs into distinct workouts for both quads and hams, but more recently he’s gone back to hitting the whole thigh in one shot. He feels his quads are among the very best in the world, but acknowledges that his hams aren’t quite as dominant. “Other guys definitely have more hang to their hams from the side, but my hams have so much detail and separation from the back. That’s a real strong point in my back poses.” He likes to start hams off with seated leg curls, and leans forward to help feel a stronger contraction.
6) Single Leg Curls
Next up is a standing leg curl. “Because it’s an isolateral movement, I can focus on really squeezing just that one hamstring at a time,” says Cutler. “This is a great exercise for pumping the hams up and getting that blood volume in there. It’s also valuable for helping to add detail, because it’s easy to stop at the top for a strong isometric squeeze.”
7) Lying Leg Curls
Three different types of leg curls in one workout, even after everything Jay has already done for quads preceding that? You know it. Jay may not yell and scream or use weights that world-class powerlifters would approve of, but you can’t deny that the man is a real workhorse in the gym. “All three of those types of leg curls hit the hams in slightly different ways,” says Jay. “I’d be missing out if I neglected any of them.” Cutler is always after a pronounced stretch on the lying leg curl, and he’ll do things like stick a pad under his thighs to increase the range of motion, or pause at the bottom with his legs fully extended. Jay also likes to get forced reps toward the end of his sets on lying leg curls to ensure that he achieves a full contraction before lowering the pad down slowly and under control, which by that point is a painful process.
8) Stiff-leg Deadlifts
Finally, Jay gives his hams a very thorough stretch via stiff-leg deadlifts, using either a barbell or dumbbells. Often he will stand on a Reebok step to allow for a deeper stretch. “I don’t treat this as a heavy movement at all,”Jay tells us. “I’m after the best stretch possible, which is why you’ll see that I let the bar come forward a bit from my legs as I lower it.” Cutler keeps an arch in his lower back and never lets it round, so his stiff-legs hit their intended target, the hamstrings— and not the lower back.
The Goal: Detail-Oriented
“You can never have too much detail and refinement, and the way I trained my legs was completely geared toward,” he says. By working his quads and hams from different angles and paying special attention to finer points like foot position and rep speed, his thighs grow more seasoned and mature every year. Those wheels helped carry him to four Mr. Olympia wins. Regardless of whether or not you too have extraordinary genetics for building enormous quads and hams, you can learn a lot from Jay Cutler and how he trains his.
Jay’s Leg Routine
Leg Extensions 4 x 12 (as warm-up)
45-Degree Leg Presses 2 x 12-15 (warm-up), 4 x 10
Hack Squats 4 x 10
Leg Extensions 4 x 12
Smith Machine Squats 4 x 10
Vertical Leg Press 3 x 10
Seated Leg Curls 4 x 10
Single Leg Curls 4 x 10
Lying Leg Curls 4 x 10-12
Stiff-leg Deadlifts 4 x 10
Jay’s Training Split*
Day 1:Chest and calves
Day 2:Back and traps
Day 3:Shoulders and arms
Day 4:Legs
*Rest days are taken as needed. Sometimes Jay will run through all four days before taking a rest day.
Three Leg-training Mistakes Jay Sees all the Time
1. Too many reps, not enough volume.
“I really don’t think high reps are the best way to build mass in the legs. I’ve seen the best results by sticking with 8-12 reps, but doing a lot of overall volume. Your legs can take a lot of abuse. You walk around on them all day. You want to challenge yourself with the weight, and don’t be afraid to do a lot of sets. It takes me two hours to train quads and hams, and I don’t rest much at all. I want to keep the blood flowing and a pump going that whole time.”
2. Too much weight, not enough ROM.
“Guys get caught up all the time with using as much weight as they can, but they usually end up either not using a full range of motion, cheating the weight up, or both. It really doesn’t matter how much weight you use. It’s about getting nice, full contractions and stretches on all your reps. That’s why I’ll do things like pause in the hole when I squat for a second or two before driving back up, and slowing my negatives down so I feel the quads or hams stretching as I lower the weight. You recruit a lot more muscle fibers this way, and you make sure the muscle is doing the work, and not momentum. I don’t use more than 405 on squats, which some people like to knock me for, but I get a lot out of every rep. If you’re using a ton of weight but not feeling the quads and hams work and you don’t get a pump, you’re not getting much out of your leg workouts.”
3. Not enough variety/angles.
“This goes along with my high-volume style. The legs are a very large and complex group of muscles. To think you can work them as effectively as possible with just a couple of exercises is silly. People think it’s too much when they see I do squats, leg presses, hack squats, leg extensions and lunges all in one workout for quads, but all of those movements hit the quads from different angles and in different ways.”
Ron Harris got his start in the bodybuilding industry during the eight years he worked in Los Angeles as Associate Producer for ESPN’s “American Muscle Magazine” show in the 1990s. Since 1992 he has published nearly 3,000 articles in bodybuilding and fitness magazines, making him the most prolific bodybuilding writer ever. Ron has been training since the age of 14 and competing as a bodybuilder since 1989, and maintains the popular website www.ronharrismuscle.com, most notable for its blog “The Daily Pump.” He lives with his wife and two children in the Boston area.