How to Get Bigger Quads

If one of your fitness goals is to develop bigger quads, this article is for you.

What is the Quad?

Before we discuss how to get bigger quads, let’s take a closer look at what they are. The quadriceps (or quads) are the four muscles found on the front of your leg or thigh. Those four muscles contract together to either flex your hip or extend your knee. The four muscles that make up the quadriceps are the Rectus Femoris, Vastus Lateralis, Vastus Medialis, and Vastus Intermedius.

The quadriceps are the primary muscles that support your knee bone. This means if you have any weakness in your quads, you can end up dealing with knee instability, which can eventually lead to an increase of wear and tear within the joint. This leads us to our next point regarding your quads…

Why Quad Strength is Important

Your quadriceps are required in order to perform several important daily tasks, such as standing up from a seated position and supporting your knees when you stand or walk. Once again weakness in the quads can lead to knee instability, which can lead to excessive wear and tear within the joint.

In fact, a study of individuals who suffered from cartilage loss in their founds found that this loss occurred in 44 percent of those with quadriceps weakness, compared with 11.7 percent of those with normal quad strength. This means another risk of having weak quads is an increased risk of cartilage loss. So if you want to protect and strengthen your knees pay attention to your quads!

Now let’s look at how to strengthen and build up your quads.

Best Exercises to Help You Get Huge Quads

The good news is most of the exercises that help build up your quads are quite easy to accomplish with a home gym, or even a few pieces of equipment if you don’t have a home gym set up yet. The “secret” to building bigger quads is to get as strong as possible using compound exercises that train your quads, not by focusing on machines that target the quads in the gym.

This means you should spend the majority of your time in the gym doing exercises like squats, leg presses, lunges, and step-ups, and leave exercises like leg extensions or sissy squats for the end of your workout.

Here’s a few of the best exercises to try:

Sumo Deadlift

The sumo deadlift has been found to be more effective in targeting the quad muscles compared to the conventional deadlift. Since he sumo deadlift requires wider foot positioning, it enables the thighs to be lowered closer to the floor, thus activating more leg muscles and therefore helping to build bigger quads.

How to do a sumo deadlift:

1. Brace your core and bring your hips toward the bar. Engage your lower back, legs, and glutes so you feel as if your muscles are activated.
2. Turn your quadriceps so your femurs rotate open in your hip sockets, lining up your knees with your feet and toes.
3. Grab the bar with an overhand or mixed grip and slide your shoulder blades back and down, locking them into place.
4. Pull up on the bar until it comes into contact with the top of the inner circle of the weight plate while simultaneously pressing your legs into the floor.
5. Inhale and drive your legs into the ground while pulling the bar up, while keeping your chest high and your hips down.
6. Pull the bar along your legs as close to your body as you can and press through your heels as you push through your legs to raise up.
7. Squeeze your glutes and fully lock out your knees and hips at the top position.
8. Reverse the movement slowly, keeping the bar close to your body.

Leg Extensions

The leg press doesn’t involve balancing or supporting weight with your upper body, which means you can use heavier loads than with other exercises. The leg press is also far less fatiguing than free weight exercises, which means you can do it more often without burning out. While it’s not as effective as the barbell back squat—it’s a great quad-building exercise. Here’s how to do it:

1. Place your hands on the hand bars.
2. Lift the weight while exhaling until your legs are almost straight without locking your knees.
3. Keep your back against the backrest and do not arch your back.
4. Exhale and lower the weight back to starting position.

Short Arc Quads

The short arc quad exercise is a great way to focus on contracting your quads and building strength., To do these, start by lying flat on your back on the floor with a soccer ball or basketball under your knees to prop it up.

1. Slowly straighten your bent knee until it is all the way straight.
2. Engage your quad with your toes dorsal flexed up toward the ceiling.
3. Hold for 5-10 seconds.
4. Slowly lower your leg down and relax.

Barbell Back Squat

The barbell back squat is one of the most effective exercises you can do for building quad size and strength. This movement also allows you to use very heavy weights, which maximizes tension on your muscle fibers and thus muscle growth over time.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Position a barbell in a squat rack at about the height of your nipples.
2. Step under the bar, pinch your shoulder blades together resting the bar directly above the bony ridges on the bottom of your shoulder blades.
3. Lift the bar out of the rack, take a step backward, and place your feet a little wider than shoulder-width apart with your toes pointing slightly outward.
4. Sit down and remember to keep your back straight and push your knees out in the same direction as your toes throughout each rep.
5. Stand up, returning to your starting position.

Dumbbell Lunge

A dumbbell lunge is one of the best quad exercises using dumbbells. It is an ideal exercise because it requires greater balance and coordination than most other leg exercises, and engages many smaller stabilizer muscles throughout your entire body.

How to do a dumbbell lunge:

1. Holding a dumbbell in each hand, stand up straight with both feet about shoulder-width apart.
2. Take a long step forward with your right foot with most of your weight on your front foot, kneel down until your left knee touches the floor.
3. Reverse the motion by pushing off the floor with your front foot and leaning slightly backward, allowing your legs to straighten.
4. Once you’re standing, bring your right foot back to the starting position.

Dumbbell Step-Up

Although some people think that the dumbbell step-up is better for strengthening the inner quad—research indicates that the dumbbell step-up is a highly effective inner-quad and outer quad exercise, training both portions of your thighs simultaneously.

How to do it:

1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand and place your right foot on a box, stool, or other surface about knee-height off the floor.
2. Keep your weight on your right foot, and fully straighten your right leg.
3. Lower your left foot toward the floor, and return to the starting position.

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