Da Bullpen | Knee Wraps for Heavy Squats For Big Legs, Make Your Legs Do the Work

Written by George “Da Bull” Peterson III

21 May 2021

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Da Bullpen

By George “Da Bull” Peterson III

Knee Wraps for Heavy Squats

For Big Legs, Make Your Legs Do the Work

What is you take on knee wraps? Do you use them? If so, why, and do you only use them on certain leg movements or only when you are going extra heavy? I hear conflicting advice about knee wraps and don’t know if I should use them or not.

I do use knee wraps, but only for my heaviest sets of squats. I typically warm up with 135, 225 and 315 before I put the wraps on for 405 and up. I feel the wraps help protect my knees because I do have extremely small joints, which is perfect for bodybuilding but a liability when it comes to putting tremendous loads on the muscles. I remember early on when I was working with my coach Justin Miller, and he put me through our first leg workout together. Once I had the knee wraps on tight, it looked like I had thighs and calves with just a tiny joint connecting them. Justin was terrified my little knees would snap under four to five plates! I see some guys using knee wraps for all their compound movements like leg presses. That’s fine if you legitimately need the support, but if you’re wrapping your knees tight for a “spring” effect just to use heavier weights, I would say don’t. Make your legs do the work and they will grow much better. If you have thicker joints, you may never need to use knee wraps.

Pre-workout for Better Gains

One thing I wanted to know is, do you always use a pre-workout, or only for certain body parts? Do you ever take time off from using a pre? I wonder if they still work as well if you take them all the time.

Yes, I do use a pre-workout formula before every workout. I will have a different “cocktail” depending on the body part I’m training. For larger muscle groups like back and chest, I go all-in and mix Big Noise (Redcon1’s stim-free product to promote a pump, Total War (their stimulant for pure energy and intensity) and MOAB (mass builder and nitric oxide booster). For all other body parts, I do a scoop each of Big Noise and Total War. I don’t take time off, and so far they all still work well for me and deliver the effects I’m looking for. Stims aren’t an issue for me because I train around 2:00 p.m. and work later, usually until 2:00 a.m.

Pre-exhaust Supersets

What do you think about pre-exhaust training, doing an isolation movement for a muscle group and then going right into a compound movement, like lateral raises and shoulder presses, or leg extensions and leg presses? It cuts down on the amount of weight you can use for the compound lift, but I get a much better pump.

Personally, I don’t have much experience with true pre-exhaust. Here are some good examples of pre-exhaust supersets you can try:

Shoulders

Lateral Raises + Shoulder Press

Quads

Leg Extensions + Leg Press/Hack Squat/squat

Pecs

Dumbbell Flye/Pec Deck + Bench Press

Lats

Cable or Machine Pullovers + Pulldown/Rows

Hamstrings

Leg Curls + Romanian Deadlifts

Biceps

Curls + Narrow-grip Chin-ups

Triceps

Skull-Crushers + Dips/Close-grip Bench Press

One thing I often do that’s close to pre-exhaust is to do a few tough supersets of leg extensions and leg curls before I start my squats. This gets plenty of blood and heat into my thighs so they are warm and loose. I find I can feel my quads working much harder during squats if I do that first versus simply doing a couple of light sets of leg extensions. I’m able to use just as much weight on squats if I do those leg extension/leg curl supersets, but I don’t get as many reps. I tend to think it’s better anyway, because otherwise it takes me longer to feel my quads working on squats.

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Keep Training Strong Body Part

Your back is probably the best in the world right now. Have you ever been told to lay off it because it was overpowering? Would you ever do that?

No one ever told me to chill out on my back training, but Justin and I have discussed it a few times. The first time was on the flight back from Miami to New York after I won the NPC Nationals in 2016, when we were already figuring out what improvements I needed to make to be a top IFBB pro in Classic. I asked him if he thought I should relax on my back training and go crazy on everything else for a while. Justin replied, “Hell no!” The plan was, and still is, to keep blasting my back and just work even harder on everything else.

The only adjustment we did make to give the rest of my physique more of a chance to catch up was to eat higher calories and carbs on all training days aside from back. I feel I can train back on almost no carbs and it will still grow, or at the very least it won’t lose anything. This is just what my coach and I have decided. If any of you have a truly dominant body part and there are one or more other muscle groups that are far behind, I think it would make sense to do less for the strong body part for maybe a few months to let the other ones catch up. You could either reduce the volume and do more of a maintenance type workout for the strong body part, or try something like training it only every other week.

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