How To Get Big Legs Without Squats

Is it possible to improve your lower body’s athleticism and strength without doing the most basic movement? Yes, it is. Find out how to get big legs without squats below.

For any reason, some people prefer to stay away from squats when it comes to leg workouts. It could be because of problems on their back, mobility, neck, or even shoulder or elbow difficulties when holding the barbell before squatting. So how to get big legs without squats? John Meadows explained how.

John Meadows, “The Mountain Dog” was a professional bodybuilder, trainer and nutritionist who died in 2021 aged 49. Outlets, such as People magazine and the British online publication the Independent, wrote pieces about the Washington Court House, Ohio native’s death while a Go Fund Me campaign, set up by Cavaliere, amassed more than $260,000 in just four days.

Check out how to get big legs without squats by following Meadows’ training advice.

Firstly, you need to warm up your quads on the leg extension. If you warm up your quads, the following exercises are going to feel much better. Meadows’ did a different type of warm-up, in which you start with a weight and do 6 reps, and keep increasing the load after each time you manage to do 6 reps until you can no longer finish 6 reps.

And the first exercise you will be doing is exactly the same, leg extensions, with the weight that you left off in the warm-up. Do only one set until you get 25 reps. You can rest, pause, and shake your legs as you want, but do 25 reps and they don’t have to be unbroken.

After that, you begin with the exercise that takes over the movement of the squat. Meadows’ uses a machine that helps him do the arsenal pendulum squat, but if you don’t have that you can do a v-squat, a leg press, or a hack squat. Any machine that lets you squat while your back is supported. As with the previous exercise, choose a weight you can do 10-12 reps with and shoot for 25 reps total, pausing when needed, but don’t get out of the machine while resting.

The third exercise on the list of how to get big legs without squats is the lunge. Do 3 sets of lunges for about 25 yards.

Finally, to finish it off, you should do 2 sets of 10 reps of leg curls to strengthen your hamstrings. The last set of leg curls will be 10 normal reps, 10 partial reps, and then an iso-hold for 20 seconds to burn everything left in the tank.

And those are the exercises you should be doing if you want to understand how to get big legs without squats. Any questions? Click the video below from John Meadows.