Are you looking to build strong, muscular quads? On today's Lifting for Muscle series, I'm sharing my favorite four exercises for developing powerhouse thighs. Get ready to squat, press and extend your way to impressive quads. Welcome to the WITS and WEITS podcast. I'm your host, phillip Pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science-backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset, with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Welcome back to Quick WITS, where fitness comes fast and furious. In today's episode, we are targeting a key muscle group that is essential for your lower body strength the quads. We're going to dive into the exercises that I consider important to the development of the quads, knowing that they are just part of the overall system of the legs which I'll be covering in over the next few weeks of the Lifting for Muscle series.

First, we, of course, are always going to start with squats barbell squats, especially low bar, but not necessarily. As we come more advanced, there are definitely options to throw in the high bar, the safety bar, the front squats, all different variations. Regardless, they engage your entire lower body and even your back as a stabilizer. Depending on the type of squat you do, it's going to change the back angle and it's going to change how hard it hits the quads. If you're looking for overall strength and development, we're talking the low bar back squat. If you're looking to hit the quads specifically, the more vertical back, the more they're going to hit the quads. Generally, a front squat or a high bar squat or a safety bar squat or like a plaits narrow stance squat is going to hit your quads. Then also paused variations of that can be real burners for the quads. There you go squats with a barbell.

Next up we have leg presses. Yes, I never want to see somebody only doing leg presses without having squats in their routine, but this is a machine that is very versatile and simple to use and you can load up the weight and really push through your quads. Now there's different variations. There's the vertical type that I have, which is at home. It's plate loaded, but in the gym you have different angles that you hit them from. You could even use them for calf presses as well, just so you know. It's a great compliment to squats if you want to isolate the quads more directly and a little bit of a higher rep range and really burn them out. Okay, so that's. Number two is leg presses. Number three we have I'm going to throw in hack squats in here. If you have access to one in the gym Although there are other versions of hack squats you could do, for example, with a landmine, or some people will say that the pitch shark or the what do you call it belt squat is kind of in that territory of a hybrid between squats and leg presses, and they target the quads pretty intensely but also engage the glutes and the hamstrings.

So it's a little bit more well rounded than the leg press, and the fixed motion of the hack squat machine is good to take everything out of the equation, and even your back, and make it easier to just focus on your quads. The last thing for quads are going to be the classic leg extensions. I just like the classic seated version. They're an isolation workout, but you can't go wrong but feel it in the quads, no matter how inexperienced of a lifter you are. It's one of the few exercises that you pretty much can't screw it up, although there are little tips and tricks to get the most out of it. But if you really extend at the top, you get that muscle defining squeeze at the top of the quads. You're going to feel it and I like these later in the workout as sort of a finisher to really burn those thighs.

So if you can get these four into your routine the barbell squat, leg presses, some form of hack squat and leg extensions they're definitely going to give you stronger, more defined quads. And remember that again I say this every time it's not just about aesthetics. We like to go after the power, the stability, the strength combined with the aesthetics, and it all works in synergy. So until next time, keep squatting, don't forget to do your squats and keep challenging yourself. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights. If you found value in today's episode and know someone else who's looking to level up their wits or weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them and make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.