Dr Mike Israetel explains the science behind leg day exercise order — you’ll be surprised by the move he recommends beginning your sessions with
Some may prefer to structure their ‘leg day’ with bench press, continue with a few chest flyes and then finish up with some bicep curls, but jokes aside we all know we shouldn’t be skipping leg sessions. Exercise scientist Dr Mike Israetel has offered some more sage lifting advice in his latest YouTube video, so we can ensure leg day will get us the best muscle-building results possible and therefore eradicate our best excuses.
‘I have an interesting hypothesis about how to construct leg training to get your best possible gains, and that is to do leg curls before squats if you’re doing them both in your leg training programme,’ says Israetel.
Why Perform Leg Curls First?
The exercise scientist sets out to explain the rationale behind his hypothesis. The first and foremost piece of logic, at the top of all of our rosters, is the fact that we’re trying to get the best leg workout we can. Secondly, he explains, ‘Any muscle you train first will make training the second one harder via local, axial, and systemic fatigue.’
By ‘local fatigue’, Israetel means the local working muscle. By ‘systemic fatigue’, he means total body fatigue, and by ‘axial fatigue’, he means vertical compression of the spine.
He elaborates: ‘Anything you want to train after high-level systemic fatigue is a bad deal. It’s like any activity you want to do after you’re like eight beers drunk, yeah whatever it is you had planned for, you’re probably going to suck way more at it.
‘So, if you have important things to do in your programme, you had better not have a lot of systemic fatigue early in your programme. Because then the important stuff that comes after is not getting done to a high degree of quality.’
He also explains that the muscle groups that are larger, can cause much more fatigue than others. Israetel also notes: ‘If we can save the most fatiguing exercises, especially systemically ones for later in the plan, they can’t disrupt other exercises that follow them because there are no exercises to follow.
‘On the other hand, if we’re trying to save the most fatiguing exercises for later in the plan, but we have other exercises before, that are pretty damn fatiguing too, those later exercises become way too hampered to give us the best results.’
Optimal Leg Day Training Splits
Split 1
- Squats
- Leg Curls
Rationale: Israetel explains that the benefit of this traditional split is that you’re super fresh for squatting, but on the other hand, you’re also dead tired from squats. So anything else after this point will be hampered, in this case your hamstring growth.
Split 2
- Leg Curls
- Squats
Rationale: Israetel explains that this exercise order could be superior for muscle growth. ‘You get as much as you can out of leg curls, they’re fresh [which is] amazing for your hamstrings. That’s a win better than the last split.’
He continues: ‘Since the leg curl systemic fatigue is minor – leg curls are not that hard to your system – and the axial fatigue is super low or non-existent, because you don’t really compress your spine during leg curls, fatigue is going to be low when you hit squats, which is a big deal.’
Israetel also adds that since the hamstrings aren’t a prime mover in the squat, the local fatigue won’t affect performance. As well as this, for those who have knee niggles, this will warm-up their legs more, so that squats feel better.
The Bottom Line
Israetel recommends for hypertrophy: ‘If overall leg gains – the best possible leg gains you can have – are your priority, consider doing leg curls before any other quad work, especially before squats.’
Israetel recommends for strength: ‘If your biggest priority is the biggest squat you can possibly get, then it’s totally fine to do squats first and then do your leg curls after.’
Israetel recommends for beginners: ‘For beginners, if you’ve been training for less than about two to three years, don’t worry about exercise order too much, just focus on getting better technique with free weights.’
