How Chris Bumstead built his wicked wheels
How Chris Bumstead Built His Wicked Wheels
The high school kid who squatted
Most of us get into lifting around the same time Chris Bumstead did, age 14 in ninth grade. We all wanted to bench press more than the other brats we knew, and blow up our guns to show off for the teenage honeys. Chris was different. He wanted bigger, more powerful legs to make him better at the many sports he played: baseball, basketball, football, and of course, as he is Canadian, hockey. After warming up on the stationary bike, he would go through a gamut of lower body movements few high school students would ever bother to complete in its entirety: squats, leg presses, lunges, leg extensions, and leg curls twice every week. “In some ways I almost trained harder than I do now,” he says. “At least in the sense that I was constantly trying to get stronger at every workout, and most of my sets were in the 4-5 rep range.” His obsession with power paid off. By grade 11, he was doing good sets of squats with 315. By the start of Senior year, he was handling 405. His bodyweight climbed from 170 to 225 over the course of those four years, with the biggest jump being a 20-pound gain in the summer between Junior and Senior year.
He wanted wheels like the Golden Eagle
It wasn’t Arnold’s biceps or Ronnie’s back that provided Chris with his earliest inspiration to build extreme amounts of muscle mass – it was Tom Platz and his beyond legendary legs. “I put leg day inspiration into a search one day, and I found a few videos of Tom Platz doing these crazy leg workouts with a bunch of people standing around watching,” he recalls. “The development of his quads, hams, and calves was just incredible, and his training intensity was at a level I had never seen before.” Those workouts, which were filmed roughly 30 years ago now, still stand the test of time for those who respect brutal effort and the ability to train far past the threshold of pain. “He would do things like squat 20 or more reps with 500 pounds with no pausing at all and have a training partner push down to make his leg extensions twice as hard.” Young Chris was determined to emulate that ferocity against the iron and made up his own challenges. “One thing I liked to do at times was take 225 and get 100 reps with it, no matter how long it took,” he says. “I would stop and take a few breaths when I had to, but my rule was that I couldn’t rack the weight until I got all 100 reps.”
Leg gains to die for
Chris did in fact gain over 50 pounds of muscle in his high school years, but it was his legs that grew the most, as you might imagine. “At first I was growing out of my pants because I was getting taller, but toward the end of high school, it was my thighs that were the issue,” he explains. “My mom wasn’t too pleased about having to buy me new pants every few months!” He wound up having to purchase pants with huge waists, for obese men, to accommodate his billowing quads. I know it’s a problem those of you struggling to build your legs probably won’t sympathize with. But even though Chris has what are certainly gifted genetics for building stunning legs, he has also worked hard for them. Perhaps more importantly, as a Kinesiology major, Bumstead puts a great deal of thought and analysis into proper training technique. Here are some of the top movements he uses on leg day, along with how he has best adapted them to produce maximum results.
Leg extensions
It’s fairly common these days to see top bodybuilders performing leg extensions at two junctures in the same workout: lighter at the start as a warmup for the quads, then heavier later on to serve in more of a tissue-building capacity. Not only does Bumstead do this, but he also has two distinct ways in which he will do the actual movement. “Sometimes I sit more forward, with my butt a few inches away from the backrest, and I will emphasize the contraction by holding and squeezing my quads with each rep,” he explains. “At other times, I slide my butt all the way back so I’m actually leaning back a bit, and I get a better stretch.” Chris also likes to occasionally employ the same intensity booster he saw Mr. Platz doing in the old videos, having a spotter push down on the roller pad to increase the resistance and the difficulty factor. If any of you decide to try that, please make sure your spotter isn’t pushing down with maximum force!
Squats
Barbell squats have been the catalyst for just about every great pair of wheels ever built, and Chris’s are no exception. This kid has put in some ball-busting work at the squat rack to get these phenomenal quads. When he was working on strength, he did 5 reps with 605 pounds and a maximum single with 645. That’s six 45-pound plates, a 25, and a 5 on each side for those of you keeping score at home! He still squats heavy, but now it’s for more reps, as in three work sets with 495 for 10-15 reps before doing a final drop set starting with 405, stripping a plate each side for 315, and finishing with 225 for what often totals 45 reps. “I’m a lot more cautious about injury now,” he tells us, “so you won’t see me squatting anything I can’t get for at least ten reps anymore. And my goal now is stimulating the quads and getting the best possible contractions rather than moving the most amount of weight.” As you can see by the photos, Chris is a proponent of a full range of motion, taking every rep below parallel. “It’s actually harder for me to stop at parallel, because it just doesn’t feel right,” he notes.
Single leg press (not shown)
Chris is reasonably satisfied with the development of his quads, which is a nice position to be in at just 21 years old. But he still wants more hams, and bigger glutes. “The trend these days is to have big, striated glutes,” he says. “Mine still need more mass to achieve that look.” He found that doing the leg press with one leg at a time rather than two allowed him to feel the glutes contracting much more powerfully. “I set my foot pretty high up on the platform and sort of angle my body inward a little to get the right feel.”
Lunges
Lunges are another staple in Chris’s leg program, and he prefers the walking variation as opposed to stepping back and forth in place. “My school gym actually has a lot more open space than most commercial gyms I’ve been to, so I can take 20 steps in each direction, no problem.” The Kinesiology major alternates between two different performance styles on lunges. “If I am emphasizing my quads more in a particular workout, I will take shorter steps with my knee going over my toe,” he explains. “On other days, I will target the glutes more with longer strides and a deeper stretch.”
Leg curl
Chris makes use of all types of leg curl machines, but never all in the same workout, and not all of them for actual work sets. For example, he prefers using the seated leg curl machine only as a general warm-up for the quads, doing three sets of 20. Then, whether he opts for lying or standing leg curls depends entirely on which of the two is open and available. Either way, he will hit that for five sets of 12-15 reps. “I feel I’m quad dominant, so I am working hard to bring my hams up to match,” he adds.
Stiff-leg deadlift
Stiff-leg deadlifts are a bread and butter movement for both the hams and the glutes, and Chris does them each and every leg workout. If he is feeling especially warm and flexible that day, he will put his toes up on a plate in front of him for an even better stretch. “I keep a slight bend in my knees, lower the bar straight down, then push my butt back and squeeze my hams and glutes as I get to the top of every rep.” His working weight is typically 275 for four sets of 15-20 reps, and he uses either a barbell or a Smith machine.
Calf raise
Chris has some decent calves, but they are of only average length. That is to say, they don’t insert down at the heel the way Flex Lewis’ or the late Mike Matarazzo’s did. “They only grow when I train them hard,” he summarizes. His calf routine of choice, performed once on leg day and usually once again on another training day, is to superset heavy standing calf raises for 8-10 reps with a more moderate weight on seated calf raises for 20 reps. He does this four or five times.
Getting a leg up
It’s refreshing to see that even though Chris does possess rare genetics to build great legs, he also takes a very calculated, intelligent approach toward his training for them that we call all take away some useful information from.
Wise beyond his years? 4 tips from Chris
Want to squat heavier? Squat more often!
“A lot of kids at my school are focused more so on strength than anything else, and they often ask me how to get their squat max up. Usually it turns out they are only squatting once a week. If you are trying to get a lot stronger on squats, you need to squat twice or even three times a week. Once a week won’t cut it. Since I also work at the school gym, I tell them to come by when I’m working and I will help them improve their technique too, because that’s very important.”
Put real intensity into leg workouts
“I will see guys finish a set of squats, rack the weight, and start chatting with their friends. When I finish a set of squats, I’m out of breath and need to sit down. My head is spinning and I am exhausted. You should be pretty dead after every work set of squats. If you can talk about last night’s football game with your buddies, you simply aren’t training hard enough and need to be more intense.”
Don’t fall forward
“The biggest form mistake I see is guys leaning too far forward, so their heels almost come up off the ground. The pressure is on the balls of their feet when it should be on the heels. You wind up working too much lower back and not enough quads, hams, and glutes when you do that. It’s important to maintain a more upright stance.”
Forget about knee wraps
“I really don’t like knee wraps at all. Most people don’t know how to use them correctly, and will either wrap them too loosely or too tight. A friend of mine had his knee wraps on too tight once when he did a set of 500 pounds for 15 reps. When he sat down and unwrapped them, the sudden release of all that pressure caused a big vein to basically snap like an elastic and shoot down his leg like a varicose vein. I also feel that the wraps do too much of the work for you and take it away from the legs. I’d rather use a bit less weight and do the work on my own.”
Bloody, rotting shoes for motivation?
Young Mr. Bumstead’s footwear of choice on leg day is decidedly retro: good old-fashioned Converse All-Star Chuck Taylors. One quirky bit of trivia is that he keeps one particular old pair on hand for days when he needs a bit of extra motivation. “Sometimes if I’m tired, out of it, and just not feeling like training hard on leg day, I put this old pair of white low-tops on that are almost falling apart,” he tells us. “They have bloodstains from deadlifting, and sometimes when I slide my heels into them, the fabric tears a little more. But I look down at them and I know I have worn these shoes when I squatted 600 pounds, and that gets me fired up every time.”
Leg routine
Warm-up:
Stationary bike: 5-7 minutes
Leg extensions 3 x 20-25
Seated leg curl 4 x 20-25
Squat
Warm-ups: 135 x 20, 225 x 20, 315 x 10, 405 x 10
Work sets: 495 x 10-15
495 x 10-15
495 x 10-15
Drop set: 405 x 15, 315 x 15, 225 x 15
1-leg leg press 4 x 15-20 each leg
Stiff-leg deadlift 4 x 15-20
Leg extension 4 x 15-2-
Superset with
Lying or standing leg curl 4 x 15-20
Standing calf raise 4-5 x 8-10
Superset with
Seated calf raise 4-5 x 20
Training split*
Day 1: Back
Day 2: Chest
Day 3: Legs
Day 4: Shoulders
Day 5: Arms
*Chris only takes rest days when he feels he needs them, which isn’t often. “I’m taking advantage of my youth while I can,” he laughs.
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