Written by Ron Harris
27 August 2017

17chrisbumstead-legs

The Route to Massive Legs

Twenty-One Year Old Chris Bumstead Shows How

 

 

The High School Kid Who Squatted

Canada’s Chris Bumstead won his IFBB pro card by taking the heavyweight division at last year's North American Championships. Then later in that year he contested the Classic Physique division at the Dayana Cadeau Pro taking third with Terrence Ruffin in second and Darrem Charles first.

 

Most of us get into lifting around the same time Chris Bumstead did, at age 14 in ninth grade. We all wanted to bench press more than the other brats we knew, and blow up our guns to show off for the teenage honeys. Chris was different. He wanted bigger, more powerful legs to make him better at the many sports he played: baseball, basketball, football and of course, as he is Canadian, hockey. After warming up on the stationary bike, he would go through a gamut of lower-body movements that few high school students would ever bother to complete in their entirety: squats, leg presses, lunges, leg extensions and leg curls, twice every week. “In some ways I almost trained harder than I do now,” he says. “At least in the sense that I was constantly trying to get stronger at every workout, and most of my sets were in the four- to five-rep range.” His obsession with power paid off. By grade 11, he was doing good sets of squats with 315. By the start of senior year, he was handling 405. His bodyweight climbed from 170 to 225 over the course of those four years, with the biggest jump being a 20-pound gain in the summer between junior and senior year.

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Leg Gains to Die For

Chris did in fact gain over 50 pounds of muscle in his high school years, but it was his legs that grew the most, as you might imagine. “At first I was growing out of my pants because I was getting taller, but toward the end of high school, it was my thighs that were the issue,” he explains. “My mom wasn’t too pleased about having to buy me new pants every few months!” He wound up having to purchase pants with huge waists, for obese men, to accommodate his billowing quads. I know it’s a problem those of you struggling to build your legs probably won’t sympathize with. But even though Chris has what are certainly gifted genetics for building stunning legs, he has also worked hard for them. Perhaps more importantly, as a kinesiology major, Bumstead puts a great deal of thought and analysis into proper training technique. Here are some of the top movements he uses on leg day— along with how he has best adapted them to produce maximum results.

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Leg Extensions

It’s fairly common these days to see top bodybuilders performing leg extensions at two junctures in the same workout: lighter at the start as a warm-up for the quads, and then heavier later on to serve in more of a tissue-building capacity. Not only does Bumstead do this, but he also has two distinct ways in which he will do the actual movement. “Sometimes I sit more forward, with my butt a few inches away from the backrest, and I will emphasize the contraction by holding and squeezing my quads with each rep,” he explains. “At other times, I slide my butt all the way back so I’m actually leaning back a bit, and I get a better stretch.” Chris also likes to occasionally employ the same intensity booster he saw Tom Platz doing in the old videos, having a spotter push down on the roller pad to increase the resistance and the difficulty factor. If any of you decide to try that, please make sure your spotter isn’t pushing down with maximum force!

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Squats

Barbell squats have been the catalyst for just about every great pair of wheels ever built, and Chris’ are no exception. This kid has put in some ball-busting work at the squat rack to get these phenomenal quads. When he was working on strength, he did five reps with 605 pounds and a maximum single with 645. That’s six 45-pound plates, a 25 and a five on each side, for those of you keeping score at home! He still squats heavy, but now it’s for more reps— as in three work sets with 495 for 10-15 reps before doing a final drop set starting with 405, stripping a plate each side for 315 and finishing with 225, for what often totals 45 reps. “I’m a lot more cautious about injury now,” he tells us, “so you won’t see me squatting anything I can’t get for at least 10 reps anymore. And my goal now is stimulating the quads and getting the best possible contractions rather than moving the most amount of weight.” As you can see by the photos, Chris is a proponent of a full range of motion, taking every rep below parallel. “It’s actually harder for me to stop at parallel, because it just doesn’t feel right,” he notes.

 

Single Leg Press (not shown)

Chris is reasonably satisfied with the development of his quads, which is a nice position to be in at just 21 years old. But he still wants more hams and bigger glutes. “The trend these days is to have big, striated glutes,” he says. “Mine still need more mass to achieve that look.” He found that doing the leg press with one leg at a time, rather than two, allowed him to feel the glutes contracting much more powerfully. “I set my foot pretty high up on the platform and sort of angle my body inward a little to get the right feel.”

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Lunges

Lunges are another staple in Chris’ leg program, and he prefers the walking variation as opposed to stepping back and forth in place. “My school gym actually has a lot more open space than most commercial gyms I’ve been to, so I can take 20 steps in each direction, no problem.” The kinesiology major alternates between two different performance styles on lunges. “If I am emphasizing my quads more in a particular workout, I will take shorter steps with my knee going over my toe,” he explains. “On other days, I will target the glutes more with longer strides and a deeper stretch.”

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Leg Curls

Chris makes use of all types of leg-curl machines, but never all in the same workout, and not all of them for actual work sets. For example, he prefers using the seated leg curl machine only as a general warm-up for the quads, doing three sets of 20. Then, whether he opts for lying or standing leg curls depends entirely on which of the two is open and available. Either way, he will hit that for five sets of 12-15 reps. “I feel I’m quad dominant, so I am working hard to bring my hams up to match,” he adds.

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Stiff-Leg Deadlifts

Stiff-leg deadlifts are a bread-and-butter movement for both the hams and the glutes, and Chris does them each and every leg workout. If he is feeling especially warm and flexible that day, he will put his toes up on a plate in front of him for an even better stretch. “I keep a slight bend in my knees, lower the bar straight down, and then push my butt back and squeeze my hams and glutes as I get to the top of every rep.” His working weight is typically 275 for four sets of 15-20 reps, and he uses either a barbell or a Smith machine.

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Calf Raises

Chris has some decent calves, but they are of only average length. That is to say, they don’t insert down at the heel the way Flex Lewis’ or the late Mike Matarazzo’s did. “They only grow when I train them hard,” he summarizes. His calf routine of choice, performed once on leg day and usually once again on another training day, is to superset heavy standing calf raises for eight to 10 reps with a more moderate weight on seated calf raises for 20 reps. He does this four or five times.

 

Getting a Leg Up

Chris Bumstead’s future is looking very bright. Though it’s always been notoriously more difficult to earn IFBB pro status as a Canadian than it is for U.S. citizens, he managed to do so at only 21 years old and having only started competing two years ago. Chris has a great classic look with outstanding shape and symmetry, and a big frame that can hold substantially more quality muscle mass. At the moment, it’s his legs that stand out as truly exceptional, along with his delts. In time, he will fill out and balance his entire upper body to match his stellar wheels. It’s refreshing to see that even though Chris does possess rare genetics to build great legs, he also takes a very calculated, intelligent approach toward his training for them that we can all take away some useful information from. In the meantime, MD congratulates this soft-spoken, hardworking young man on the impressive start to his pro career.

 

Wise Beyond His Years? 4 Tips From Chris

 1. Want to squat heavier? Squat more often! “A lot of kids at my school are focused more so on strength than anything else, and they often ask me how to get their squat max up. Usually it turns out they are only squatting once a week. If you are trying to get a lot stronger on squats, you need to squat twice or even three times a week. Once a week won’t cut it. Since I also work at the school gym, I tell them to come by when I’m working and I will help them improve their technique too, because that’s very important.”

 

2. Put real intensity into leg workouts. “I will see guys finish a set of squats, rack the weight and start chatting with their friends. When I finish a set of squats, I’m out of breath and need to sit down. My head is spinning and I am exhausted. You should be pretty dead after every work set of squats. If you can talk about last night’s football game with your buddies, you simply aren’t training hard enough and need to be more intense.”

 

3. Don’t fall forward. “The biggest form mistake I see is guys leaning too far forward, so their heels almost come up off the ground. The pressure is on the balls of their feet when it should be on the heels. You wind up working too much lower back and not enough quads, hams and glutes when you do that. It’s important to maintain a more upright stance.”

 

4. Forget about knee wraps. “I really don’t like knee wraps at all. Most people don’t know how to use them correctly, and will either wrap them too loosely or too tight. A friend of mine had his knee wraps on too tight once when he did a set of 500 pounds for 15 reps. When he sat down and unwrapped them, the sudden release of all that pressure caused a big vein to basically snap like an elastic and shoot down his leg like a varicose vein. I also feel that the wraps do too much of the work for you and take it away from the legs. I’d rather use a bit less weight and do the work on my own.”

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Chris Bumstead’s Leg Routine

Warm-up:

Stationary Bike                       5-7 minutes

Leg Extensions                       3 x 20-25

Seated Leg Curls                    4 x 20-25

Squats

Warm-ups:                              135 x 20, 225 x 20, 315 x 10, 405 x 10

Work Sets:                              495 x 10-15

                                                495 x 10-15

                                                495 x 10-15

 Drop Set:                                405 x 15, 315 x 15, 225 x 15

 One-Leg Leg Press                4 x 15-20, each leg

 Stiff-Leg Deadlifts                   4 x 15-20

 Leg Extensions                       4 x 15-20

 superset with

 Lying or Standing Leg Curls   4 x 15-20

 Standing Calf Raises              4-5 x 8-10

 superset with

 Seated Calf Raises                 4-5 x 20

 

Training Split*

Day 1:  Back

Day 2:  Chest

Day 3:  Legs

Day 4:  Shoulders

Day 5:  Arms

*Chris only takes rest days when he feels he needs them, which isn’t often. “I’m taking advantage of my youth while I can,” he laughs.

 

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 5,000 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.

 

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