Health

The Right Way to Do Leg Extensions for Strong and Meaty Quads

Published

5 months ago

April 2, 2024

Last month, I talked about how I’ve reincorporated weight machines into my strength-training workouts to good effect.

This year, we’ll be doing some articles on how to use various weight machines properly. One of the benefits of using machines is that they have a much easier learning curve than lifting barbells. But there are a few things you should know about using each in order to avoid pain and injury and use them most effectively for building size and strength.

First up in these tutorials is the leg extension machine, which targets your quadriceps and your quadriceps alone.

There is some folklore out there that the leg machine can cause injuries and puts too much stress on the knees. But this isn’t borne out by research, which has found that leg extensions are safe, including for ACL rehabilitation.

There’s also a myth that leg extensions aren’t functional. But quad strength translates to everything from walking to running, and particularly to explosive movements like jumping and cutting. Also, because people often use compensating muscles when doing other leg exercises (especially if they’re dealing with injuries), leg extensions, by isolating the quads, can help correct strength imbalances created by these compensating strategies. This is useful in preventing new injuries, as well as re-injuries, particularly a second ACL tear.

Not only are leg extensions a safe strength-building exercise, they also help give you defined and meaty legs, so you can confidently wear your shorty shorts around town. And, since you’re only moving a single joint, they perform this function without requiring the kind of recovery you need after doing the squat or leg press.

But since leg extensions, like all exercises, are only safe to do if you do them right, let’s get into how to perform them properly.

Setting Up the Machine

My home gym, plate-loaded leg machine doesn’t have as many adjustment options as one you’ll find in a commercial gym, so I couldn’t dial in my position as much as you might be able to, but this a generally good set-up position.

The leg extension itself is a simple movement. The big thing you have to pay attention to is setting up the machine before you start doing them.

There are several adjustments to make to the machine before you begin this exercise to ensure ergonomic comfort, maximization of strength-producing, hypertrophy-creating force, and the prevention of undue pain and strain on your joints:

Weight stack/plates. There are different schools of thought on what weight you should use for leg extensions. One is that you should go with lower weight because you’re only using a single joint to move the weight, and you’re not able to exert that much force without form breaking down. To get the hypertrophic stimulus with lower weight, you’ll need to do high reps in the 15-20 range. If you’re going to go the high rep route with leg extensions, perform them at the end of your workout, so you don’t fatigue yourself for the main leg exercise like the squat.

The other school of thought is that as long as you can perform the reps with good form and without pain, you can stick to the traditional 8-12 rep range prescribed for hypertrophy and go heavier.

Experiment and find what works for you.

Seat back distance. The seat back can be adjusted forwards or backwards. Positioning it correctly will minimize undue strain on your knees and allow you to produce maximum force. You want to move the seat back so that when you sit down, your knees are not too far in front of the edge of the seat’s base, nor too far back. Your knees should align with the leg bar’s pivot point. The creases at the backs of the knees should sit against the edge of the butt pad.

Leg pad height. The pad that will sit on top of your lower legs can sometimes be adjusted up or down. The pad should rest where the ankle flexes. Not up on your shins or down towards your toes.

Leg bar range of motion. The leg bar can be adjusted so that it sits more or less under the seat’s base. The further back it sits, the greater the range of motion that will be possible on your leg extensions. Adjust the leg bar to full depth to maximize the range of motion.

There is sometimes also a pad that can be adjusted over the thighs to lock them down. As your butt/legs shouldn’t come up if you’re positioned correctly and do the exercise properly, this pad isn’t necessary.

Once you’ve got all these adjustments in place, you may want to make a note somewhere of the numbered positions of each piece, so the next time you use the machine, you won’t have to spend time fiddling around and making the adjustments through trial and error.

Doing Leg Extensions

Now that the machine is set up right, it’s time to do a proper leg extension:

Slow and controlled. The big mistake people make with this exercise is bouncing/swinging the leg bar up, using momentum, and letting it drop back down. Instead, you want to lift the bar up and bring it down in a slow and controlled manner. Slow and controlled is the path to hypertrophy.

Lift the bar. As you raise the leg bar, you’re not lifting your butt and hips up. You’re not rocking back and forth; only your legs are moving, not the upper half of your body. Butt stays in contact with the seat’s base pad; back stays in contact with the seat’s back pad. Lean back a little. Grip the handles to keep your butt down.

Steadily bring the bar up until you reach full knee extension/peak contraction. Pause for a second during this top hold. Squeeze. Feel and relish the burn.

Lower the bar. Much of hypertrophy happens during the eccentric phase of a lift, so lower the bar in the same slow and controlled manner that you lifted it — its descent should take a full one to two seconds.

Rather than slamming back down, the weight should just gently touch the weight stack as it returns. Once you hear it lightly clang, lift the bar up again and do another rep.

Toe position makes little difference. Keeping your toes straight ahead versus angling them a little inwards or outwards can create small differences in which parts of the quads get worked. But unless you’re an elite bodybuilder, this isn’t something you need to worry about. Keeping your toes straight or tilted slightly in is fine. Do whatever feels most comfortable for you, as this will help you produce maximum force.

Go for full range of motion. Go all the way up and all the way down with each rep. If you can only lift the leg bar halfway up, the weight is too heavy.

Go hard. Don’t just mindlessly crank out leg extensions, tacking them on to the end of your workout without giving them much effort. Just going through the motions won’t build muscle. You should be doing sets that bring you within one to two reps of failure.

Sure it hurts, but it hurts so good, baby.

Leg extensions can be done using just a single leg at a time, which can be useful for addressing strength imbalances.

Because leg extensions only work the quads, they should be done in a program that includes other leg exercises like squats, leg presses, and lunges.

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Health

Walmart Is Selling a $300 Power Tower for Just $128, and Shoppers Say It's 'Surprisingly Sturdy'

Published

17 hours ago

September 7, 2024

Michael Charboneau

Men’s Journal aims to feature only the best products and services. If you buy something via one of our links, we may earn a commission.

When building a home gym, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the equipment options, especially when you’re working with limited space and a tight budget. But when you focus on versatile gear and hunt for deals, creating a useful setup is easily doable. Thankfully, Walmart has been slashing prices on a ton of fitness equipment, including its bestselling adjustable dumbbells and even a complete home gym system. Now, it’s reduced the price of a popular power tower by over $170, and it even ships for free.

The Pooboo Body Champ Multifunction Power Tower is on sale for $128, a 57% discount on its normal price of $300. This incredibly versatile workout station has earned nearly 250 five-star ratings from Walmart shoppers who’ve praised its “strong and sturdy” build and “quality fit and finish,” and it’s currently one of the top 5 bestselling models on the site.

Pooboo Body Champ Multifunction Power Tower, $128 (was $300) at Walmart

Don’t let the brand’s bizarre name fool you—this power tower is a well-made piece of gym equipment. It features steel construction and is rated to hold up to 480 pounds (the tower itself weighs 66 pounds). A nearly 42-inch H-shaped base gives it excellent stability, so it won’t wobble or shake when you’re exercising, and anti-slip feet on the bottom keep it securely planted on the floor. It’s also adjustable (from 71.4 inches to 94 inches) to accommodate users of varying heights. And, once it’s set up, you can use it for a huge range of exercises, including dips, pull-ups, chin-ups, push-ups, vertical leg raises, knee raises, and more.

According to Walmart reviewers, the Pooboo Body Champ stands out for its solid build and usefulness. “It’s a surprisingly sturdy piece of equipment,” a shopper said. “Everything about this fitness tower is perfect. I originally purchased this with the intention of only doing pull-ups on it, but after quickly assembling the power tower, I came to realize just how versatile it is. It has cushions for knee and leg raises, it’s sturdy, and the perfect width for dips.” Another shopper agreed, saying, “This was a much-needed addition to my home gym.”

“This thing is amazing and worth every penny,” said another, who added that it’s “easy to install and can hold a lot of weight.”

At just $128, this Pooboo power tower is a screaming deal, and it’s sure to get lots of use during your workouts. But this discount won’t last long, so grab one today before the price pumps back up.

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Health

Alzheimer’s Drug May Save Lives Through ‘Suspended Animation’

Published

1 day ago

September 7, 2024

Harvard Gazette

By Lindsay Brownell | Wyss Institute Communications | Harvard Gazette

Could buy patients more time to survive critical injuries and diseases, even when disaster strikes far from a hospital

Donepezil, an FDA-approved drug to treat Alzheimer’s, has the potential to be repurposed for use in emergency situations to prevent irreversible organ injury, according to researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

Using Donepezil (DPN), researchers report that they were able to put tadpoles of Xenopus laevis frogs into a hibernation-like torpor.

“Cooling a patient’s body down to slow its metabolic processes has long been used in medical settings to reduce injuries and long-term problems from severe conditions, but it can only currently be done in a well-resourced hospital,” said co-author Michael Super, director of immuno-materials at the Wyss Institute. “Achieving a similar state of ‘biostasis’ with an easily administered drug like DNP could potentially save millions of lives every year.”

This research, published Thursday in ACS Nano, was supported as part of the DARPA Biostasis Program, which funds projects that aim to extend the time for lifesaving medical treatment, often referred to as “the Golden Hour,” following traumatic injury or acute infection. The Wyss Institute has been a participant in the Biostasis Program since 2018, and has achieved several important milestones over the last few years.

Using a combination of predictive machine learning algorithms and animal models, the Wyss’ Biostasis team previously identified and tested existing drug compounds that had the potential to put living tissues into a state of suspended animation. Their first successful candidate, SNC80, significantly reduced oxygen consumption (a proxy for metabolism) in both a beating pig heart and in human organ chips, but is known to cause seizures when injected systemically.

In the new study, they once again turned to their algorithm to identify other compounds whose structures are similar to SNC80. Their top candidate was DNP, which has been approved since 1996 to treat Alzheimer’s.

Achieving a similar state of ‘biostasis’ with an easily administered drug like DNP could potentially save millions of lives every year.

–Michael Super

“Interestingly, clinical overdoses of DNP in patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease have been associated with drowsiness and a reduced heart rate — symptoms that are torpor-like. However, this is the first study, to our knowledge, that focuses on leveraging those effects as the main clinical response, and not as side effects,” said the study’s first author, María Plaza Oliver, who was a postdoctoral fellow at the Wyss Institute when the work was conducted.

The team used X. laevis tadpoles to evaluate DNP’s effects on a whole living organism, and found that it successfully induced a torpor-like state that could be reversed when the drug was removed. The drug, however, did seem to cause some toxicity, and accumulated in all of the animals’ tissues. To solve that problem, the researchers encapsulated DNP inside lipid nanocarriers, and found that this both reduced toxicity and caused the drug to accumulate in the animals’ brain tissues. This is a promising result, as the central nervous system is known to mediate hibernation and torpor in other animals as well.

Although DNP has been shown to protect neurons from metabolic stress in models of Alzheimer’s disease, the team cautions that more work is needed to understand exactly how it causes torpor, as well as scale up production of the encapsulated DNP for use in larger animals and, potentially, humans.

“Donepezil has been used worldwide by patients for decades, so its properties and manufacturing methods are well-established. Lipid nanocarriers similar to the ones we used are also now approved for clinical use in other applications. This study demonstrates that an encapsulated version of the drug could potentially be used in the future to buy patients critical time to survive devastating injuries and diseases, and it could be easily formulated and produced at scale on a much shorter time scale than a new drug,” said senior author Donald Ingber, the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Bioinspired Engineering at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

This research was supported by DARPA under Cooperative Agreement Number W911NF-19-2-0027, the Margarita Salas postdoctoral grant co-funded by the Spanish Ministry of Universities, and the University of Castilla-La Mancha (NextGeneration EU UNI/551/2021).

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This story is reprinted with permission from The Harvard Gazette.

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Health

Can Stuff in Rosemary Extract Fight Cocaine Addiction?

Published

2 days ago

September 5, 2024

Futurity

Researchers have discovered that an antioxidant found in rosemary extract can reduce intakes of cocaine by moderating the brain’s reward response, offering a new therapeutic target for treating addiction.

September 5, 2024 by Futurity Leave a Comment

By Pat Harriman-UC Irvine

The study in the journal Neuron describes researchers’ focus on a region of the brain called the globus pallidus externus, which acts as a gatekeeper that regulates how we react to cocaine.

They discovered that within the GPe, parvalbumin-positive neurons are crucial in controlling the response to cocaine by changing the activity neurons releasing the pleasure molecule dopamine.

“There are currently no effective therapeutics for dependence on psychostimulants such as cocaine, which, along with opioids, represent a substantial health burden,” says corresponding author Kevin Beier, an associate professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of California, Irvine.

“Our study deepens our understanding of the basic brain mechanisms that increase vulnerability to substance use disorder-related outcomes and provides a foundation for the development of new interventions.”

Findings in mice revealed that globus pallidus externus parvalbumin-positive cells, which indirectly influence the release of dopamine, become more excitable after being exposed to cocaine. This caused a drop in the expression of certain proteins that encode membrane channels that usually help keep the globus pallidus cell activity in check. The researchers found that carnosic acid, an isolate of rosemary extract, selectively binds to the affected channels, providing an avenue to reduce response to the drug in a relatively specific fashion.

“Only a subset of individuals are vulnerable to developing a substance use disorder, but we cannot yet identify who they are. If globus pallidus cell activity can effectively predict response to cocaine, it could be used to measure likely responses and thus serve as a biomarker for the most vulnerable,” Beier says. “Furthermore, it’s possible that carnosic acid could be given to those at high risk to reduce the response to cocaine.”

The next steps in this research include thoroughly assessing negative side effects of carnosic acid and determining the ideal dosage and timing. The team is also interested in testing its efficacy in reducing the desire for other drugs and in developing more potent and targeted variants.

Scientists from the University of West Virginia and the University of Colorado participated in the study.

Support for this work came from the National Institutes of Health, One Mind, the Alzheimer’s Association, New Vision Research, BrightFocus Foundation, and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.

Source: UC Irvine

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Previously Published on futurity.org with Creative Commons License

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