British Steel | Monster Leg Training With Luke Sandoe By Ron Harris
British Steel
Monster Leg Training With Luke Sandoe
By Ron Harris
Luke “The Juggernaut” Sandoe was definitely one of the fastest-rising stars in our sport this year. We’d seen glimpses of his potential in the 2017 and 2018 seasons, but it was the 2019 Arnold Classic where he forced us all to sit up and take notice. At 5-foot-8 and a full, crisp 272 pounds, Luke served notice that he was well on his way to major titles, and eventually finished third to the same two men who would be one and two at the Mr. Olympia six months later, Brandon Curry and William Bonac. Needing to shore up his berth at the Olympia, Luke traveled to Tampa in August, where he would have swept the contest had it not been for the entry of Florida native Dexter Jackson. By the time he got to Las Vegas, it was clear that his body probably needed a break from prep, but Sandoe still managed to eke out 11th place. What is crystal clear is that this man has some of the best potential we’ve seen in years, to the point where Arnold Classic and even Mr. Olympia titles are certainly going to be within his reach sooner rather than later. He’s got that rare blend of ideal structure, plenty of mass, and pleasing shape that simply doesn’t come around too often. One area Luke is working hard to improve on is his legs, particularly his quads. When you have such massive, round muscles in the entire upper body as he does, the wheels need to be equally freaky. Let’s take a look at Luke’s leg training, starting from the very beginning.
One Strong Young Bloke
Let it be stated for the record that Luke was never a 98-pound weakling. When he started lifting in his college years, he was already a solid 200 pounds with much bigger arms and calves than the average untrained man. He had two nicknames: “Brick Shithouse” and “Thyz.” The latter was in reference to his stocky legs. “Everyone was wearing those skintight skinny jeans at the time,” he informs us. “I wore the relaxed fit, but because my thighs were already on the thicker side, it looked like I had somehow squeezed into skinny jeans.”
The first gym he ever wandered into was stocked with powerlifters, as this was a far more popular pastime in his area than bodybuilding. Seeing so many big and strong men training, Sandoe mimicked their workouts. “That first day, I saw a bunch of guys squatting and deadlifting, so that’s what I did for my first session.” Some of you will raise an eyebrow at this, but that first day, Luke pulled 405 for reps on the deadlift, and squatted 315 as well. You read that correctly. “I had no frame of reference, so I didn’t know that was a lot of weight for a beginner,” he tells us. “There were guys in there using five or six plates a side or more for those exercises, so I didn’t think the weights I started off with were anything special.”
He also nearly got into a fistfight when he plucked a weight belt off the floor and went off to lift with it. “The owner came up to me very upset that I’d taken his belt, but we became good friends soon after.”
Though Luke had been reading bodybuilding magazines for a little while by then, he wasn’t too keen on the idea of becoming one himself. “There were no bodybuilders around where I lived, but there were and still are plenty of guys in the U.K. who are very much into powerlifting and strongman. Really, I just wanted to get big and strong,” he says.
In retrospect, he now believes that at least when it came to legs, he shouldn’t have been so concerned with how heavy he was training. “I was obsessed with seeing how much weight I could use on everything: squats, leg presses, leg extensions and leg curls. That meant piles and piles of plates on the leg press, the entire stack for extensions and curls, and building up to squatting with seven plates each side for six reps. “I was really just lifting weights and not really feeling the muscles contract and stretch,” he notes. “My upper body made good gains in spite of that, but my legs didn’t quite keep up.”
He also successfully employed DC Training for a full two years, which he credits for helping him grow his back, shoulders and chest. For those unfamiliar with it, DC is based on brief, high-intensity workouts that gradually add either weight or reps to selected exercises on a continual basis. “It didn’t work as well for me when it came to arms and legs, and later I discovered those areas responded better to more volume.”
Squats Had to Go
The barbell squat is the go-to movement for building huge thighs, and it works very well for most people. Not everyone is structurally suited to it though. One example was Dorian Yates, who abandoned squats after a hip injury before he even turned pro. His fellow Brit Luke got incredibly strong on squats, but failed to see the results he was after. “They wrecked my knees, which I later figured out is because I’m hip dominant in that movement,” he explains.
Another issue Sandoe ran into with squats is something most of us probably would never have to worry about— his traps are too big to set the barbell on properly. “As such, I can’t do either high or low-bar squats. I have to put the bar in a very odd place to try and keep balanced.” He found that safety bar squats, with the handles welded on to the bar to hold in front of the shoulders, were much better. Now he alternates those with hack squats in his workouts. Along with leg presses, his legs have been improving steadily. Here are some other movements he relies on to blast his wheels.
Leg Curls
Many bodybuilders will perform all three main types of leg curls in the same workout for hamstrings: lying, seated, and single leg. Luke has a different approach. “I will stick with one of those for a few weeks until I feel I’m not getting as much out of it, then I rotate to another one for a while.” He maintains strict form on all variations. With seated leg curls, he is sure to keep his lower back pressed into the backrest. For lying leg curls, Sandoe always keeps his hips on the pad. Rather than utilize a standard set of rep scheme of something like three to four sets of 10-12 reps, he will do as many warm-up sets as it takes to build up to one all-out heavy set of six to eight reps. Then, he will reduce the weight by about 20 percent and do a “back-off set” for higher reps and continue with partial reps once he has reached failure with a full range of motion.
Hack Squats
For his main compound movement, Luke alternates between safety bar squats and hack squats. On hacks, he also likes to switch up his foot position to target different sections of the quads. With a closer foot stance, he can work more of the outer sweep. With feet further apart and angled outward in a duck stance, the teardrop/vastus medialis and adductors are emphasized. Though he has backed off from his obsession with mega-heavy weights, Sandoe still goes heavy here, warming up until he gets to a resistance level he can do four sets of eight reps with. Often, he finishes with a bit less weight and higher reps. And in some workouts, he attached a band to alter the resistance curve. “The tension increases as you push up,” he tells us. “That means it’s easier in the first part of the rep, so it’s easier on my knees, and harder as you near the top of the rep, putting extra tension on the quads where I want it.”
Leg Extensions
The standard position of leg extensions in the leg workouts of most bodybuilders is right at the start, theoretically to warm up the quadriceps. In more recent years, a trend has emerged of doing them later in the session. This makes more sense when you think about it, because it’s a single-joint isolation movement and thus a poor choice to warm up for heavy compound exercises like the squat or leg press. Luke typically sandwiches his leg extensions between his two pressing movements. “What I usually do here is to warm up until I am ready for a set of 15, where that’s the heaviest I can go, then follow it up with a drop set that will end in partial reps until I can’t budge the weight at all.” Another variation Sandoe employs is to occasionally perform extensions unilaterally, or one leg at a time.
Leg Press (not shown)
Along with either safety bar squats or hack squats, leg presses round out Luke’s arsenal of heavy compound lifts for his legs. He will of course take his time to gradually work up in weight until he arrives at an amount that’s somewhat challenging for 12 reps. This same weight is used for four sets, and if he’s chosen correctly, he can’t quite get 12 on the final set. This final set becomes a triple drop set, where the weight is reduced three times after failing initially. The rep total can be anywhere from 40-60 here, leaving his quads pumped up like balloons.
Seated Calf Raises
MD keeps it real and No Bull, so here’s the truth: Luke rarely trains his calves. As we said earlier, they were already large before he ever did his first set of calf raises, and it didn’t take much direct training to blow them up to the cows you see today. When he does train calves, he uses the same style he picked up from DC Training. “This entails an explosive lift to the top contracted position, a five-second negative, and a five-second hold in the fully stretched position. That’s how each rep is performed,” he explains. Two sets of 10-12 in that pattern are all he needs. As for machines, there are only two Luke likes to use, the seated calf raise as shown, and “toe raises” on the leg press machine.
Next Up – a Nice Break Is in Order
When you look at Luke’s contests from 2019, which spanned from early March to mid-September, you realize he was in prep for 11 months. “It was a very long year, and my mind and body both need some time to rest up and recharge,” he says. In the coming off-season, Sandoe is looking to get his midsection smaller and tighter, to focus again on his lower chest after successfully thickening his upper pecs by specializing on them for a full year, and to grow his quads more to match his enormous upper body.
“I’ve seen so much improvement in my quads just in the last year since I stopped focusing on using the heaviest weights possible and putting far more emphasis on form and feeling the muscle fibers fire and contract,” he tells us. If you too could use some help in getting your wheels to match your upper body, take some tips from Luke. He’s got that rare combination of brains and brawn that makes him someone who not only has a world-class physique, but also a man who can assist you in reaching your own bodybuilding goals.
Sample Leg Routine*
Leg Curls 1 x 6-8, 1 x 10-12 plus partials
Adductor Machine 1 x 6-8, 1-12-15 plus partials
Hack Squat or 4 x 8
Safety Bar Squats
Leg Extensions 1 x 15, 1 drop set plus partials
Leg Press Sets of 12, add weight until reps are 10 or less
Final set is a triple drop set
Stiff-Leg Deadlifts 3-4 x 10-12
*Only working sets are shown. Luke will gradually work up to his top weight over the course of anywhere from three to five sets before he begins “counting” sets.
Current Training Split
Contest History
2012 UKBFF British South Coast Junior Winner
2012 British Championships Second, Intermediate Over 90kg
2015 British Championships Sixth Place, Super Heavyweight
2016 UKBFF Welsh Championships Super Heavyweight and Overall
2016 British Championships Super Heavyweight and Overall
2017 Arnold Classic Eighth Place
2017 Vancouver Pro 13th Place
2018 Arnold Classic Australia Sixth place
2018 California Pro 15th Place
2018 Indy Pro Third Place
2019 Arnold Classic Third Place
2019 Tampa Pro Second Place
2019 Mr. Olympia 11th Place
Luke Sandoe’s Redcon1 Stack
Grunt® – potent and effective EAA formula for the bodybuilder who takes recovery seriously.
Tango – highly powered creatine recovery solution to improve performance.
Big Noise– non-stimulant pump formula and pre-workout vasodilator
Cluster Bomb®– for intra/post-workout carbs to maximize performance during training and remove delayed-onset muscle soreness in the days following Luke’s grueling training sessions.
Mental Trigger®– highly advanced focus formula to unlock brain focus, attentiveness and creativity.
For more information, visit redcon1.com
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. He lives with his wife and two children in the Boston area. Facebook Instagram
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