Calisthenics for LEG MASS??

Recent obligations have made my access to a barbell largely inconsistent. This entire year I've gone through cycles of writing my "perfect" lifting program, making solid gains and then dropping it for weeks at a time due to said obligations. Instead of further perpetuating this cycle, I decided to use it as an opportunity to return to calisthenics, a style of training I've loved yet neglected for many years! I just had one problem....

Calisthenics has a reputation for being "ineffective" for leg hypertrophy and my passion is in growing offensively large legs: Is it even possible to grow my legs without significant external poundages? When I looked at the what the calisthenics athletes were doing, I wasn't particularly encouraged. The guys who didn't appear to have slender legs kept them perpetually hidden beneath sweatpants. I don't bring it up as a knock towards these athletes: The results they have vs the results I want are a matter of priorities. The reputation calisthenics has acquired in regards to leg training is the result of....

1. Training being feat focused

Calisthenics athletes prioritize skill building. They don't necessarily care about muscular development and will generally try to get/remain smaller to make performing feats easier. Compounding on that is the fact that certain "advanced" leg progressions are largely feats of balance and mobility that offer miniscule if any extra hypertrophic benefit. In the case of the pistol squat versus single leg squats off of a platform: The latter movement actually offers superior gluteal stimulus while being much easier to perform and yet it will often be discarded once the athlete achieves the mobility to perform a pistol squat.

2. Leg training being an afterthought 

There aren't a lot of lower body movements available for calisthenics athletes to perform. Once they cap off progression they see their work as done and train for maintenance because there's nowhere else to go. It's a waste of time/energy that could be spent mastering the extremely wide variety of upper body skills available. Not only that, but bigger legs are heavier legs. Heavier legs means those upper body feats will be harder to perform. Some calisthenics athletes will limit or entirely forego leg training for this reason. 

3. The existence of "hybrid" athletes who train with weights

In calisthenics communities a "hybrid athlete" is someone who trains using both weights and calisthenics. These guys typically have very well rounded physiques including developed legs. In my opinion this is the perfect way to train, and it's how I intend to train whenever I do have access to a barbell. The issue however is that it further reinforces the notion that you need to lift weights to grow your legs.... and that's not helpful for when I don't have access to my weights. 

(Paul Anderson might not be the first person you associate with calisthenics but he believed in a hybrid training style that included jumps, single leg squats and handstand pushups)

I realized I had to return to my roots and think like a lifter. At the end of the day resistance is resistance. Basic hypertrophy principles persevere. The first thing to consider is movement selection: It's imperative to pick movements that take the targeted muscle through a full range of motion starting from it's fully stretched position. So long as I'm capable of performing that movement within the effective hypertrophy rep range (5-30), I have gains to milk from it.  For example, the cornerstone of any calisthenics program is some variation of single leg squats. To that end I would opt to use pistol squats over shrimp squats because while shrimp squats are harder, they don't allow me to reach a fully stretched position for my quads or glutes like pistols do. For the time being I can't do close to 30 reps on either leg so I can still grow with them! 

The second consideration is volume accumulation. I love to utilize back-off sets to accumulate volume on my compound lifts. With calisthenics, it's not possible to manipulate load, only leverage. I can't make a pistol squat lighter, but I can perform easier variations such as cossack squats and bulgarian split squats. Fatigue from the preceding main movement keeps these movements challenging, and training these easier variations for reps makes me stronger and more stable when I train my main movement. What's cool is that movement variety is automatically built into the program. In the case of cossack squats, they hit the gluteus medius more effectively. With Bulgarian split squats, I can choose a form that emphasizes my glutes or quads without balance being a limiting factor. 

Putting it all together my routine looked like this:

Warm-up:

Squats x15-20

Cossack squats x5e

Bulgarian Split Squats x 10e

Working sets:

Elevated single leg squats 3-5x5+

Bulgarian split squats 3x10+

Cossack squats 3x5+

Elevated single leg hip thrust 5x12+

Gato glute hinge: 5x10+

(My variation of a single-legged goodmorning)

Assisted Nordic curls 2xf

Yoga ball Hamstring curls 2xf

Aside from single leg squats you'll see that I also include a hip thrust, a hinge and a hamstring curl. It's my opinion that these 4 movement patterns are required for complete leg development and health. Unfortunately as far as hip thrusts and hinges are concerned, there aren't a lot of options to make them more difficult. I've opted to increase the volume on variations I found suitably challenging and essentially treat them as isolation movements. 

This routine was extremely effective. My entire lower body was as sore as any barbell training would have made it and for the time being I have a ways to go before I surpass the effective hypertrophy rep range on any of these movements. 

There will be a point where I eventually cap these movements out at sets of 30. 

Certain movements such as the pistol squat can be replaced with harder variations. Dragon pistol squats look to provide a far superior stretch and range of motion to the glutes. 

(Shout out to Al Kavadlo who as far as I know invented dragon squats, or at the very least was the first to popularize them.)

Assisted Nordic curls can be worked into conventional Nordic curls and eventually single leg Nordic curls. The hinge and the hip thrust rely on the glutes as a primary mover and they can produce extreme amounts of force. 3x bodyweight for double digit reps on the hip thrust isn't unheard of for even small women. These movements will require a lot of creativity to progress on without any type of loading. The Gato glute hinge is already something I invented to make unweighted hinging viable for glute hypertrophy (Technique will be described in a future post) and I have some ideas about more advanced hip thrusts but for now I'm enjoying the gains I'm making while I can make them. I think for the long term these movement patterns need to be weighted to get the most out of them.

To put it all in a nutshell calisthenics does have limitations but it's my firm belief that there is a lot of unrealized potential in regards to its effectiveness for lower body hypertrophy. With knowledge of your own body and a little creativity you can go a very long way.