Blasting Legs to the Max | with Branch Warren & Jose Raymond
Blasting Legs to the Max
Wheels of Steel Workout with Branch Warren & Jose Raymond
I think MD does a pretty good job of pairing up the right training duos for training shoots. If the body part is legs, of course you want Branch Warren in there. And if you’re going to have one of the hardest-training, most thickly developed men in the sport hitting wheels, who better to train with him than The Boston Mass, Jose Raymond? Not only are they both known for owning sickeningly massive pillars, but Branch and Jose both have well-deserved reputations for blinding, gut-busting intensity. What better body part to showcase that intensity than the most brutal to train, legs? We got those two hardcore, no-bull athletes together and let them loose on the iron to show us what insane leg training is all about. (Originally published in the February 2014 edition of MD Magazine.)
RH: First off, you guys have been compared to each other more than a few times. In what ways have you heard you’re alike, and are there any other similarities you two have that aren’t as obvious?
BW: The first thing everyone notices is our physiques. We’re both extremely thick, and we get that grainy condition you don’t see much of these days. I think we’re both usually the best-conditioned guys in our shows when we compete. And when you look at us, you know we got this way by training heavy and hard for a long time.
JR: Of course there are physical similarities: a shit-ton of grainy, vascular, striated muscle. A lot of that is genetic, but it’s the powerlifting mentality we both had in our younger years too. We both competed in bench press meets back in the day, and we’ve both squatted well over 500 pounds for many reps. We both leave everything on the gym floor when we train, whereas a lot of people just sort of go through the motions. That’s a huge part of why we look the way we do.
RH: Time to talk leg training, and I think we need to start with squats. Give me a little history on the role squats have played in your leg training and your leg development, and how have you changed the way you squat or how you incorporate them into your leg workouts over the years?
BW: Squats were one of the first exercises I ever did, before I even really knew about bodybuilding. For football we did squats and stiff-leg deadlifts. I consider squats to be the best total lower body exercise you can do. You get your quads, hams and glutes all working hard. I guarantee you my legs wouldn’t look the way they do if it hadn’t been for squatting all these years. In my teens and early 20s, I always squatted first. I was training like a powerlifter much of that time, and even did a few meets. So when I would squat back then, it was always heavy and for low reps.
As the years went by, I started doing more reps and putting squats further into the leg workout. Due to just general wear and tear, I found I needed to do extensions first too, to warm up my knees and give the quads some pre-exhaust before I started doing the heavy compound movements. Squats are usually almost the last thing I do for quads now.
JR: Squats have been responsible for my leg development from day one. I started alternating between regular and front squats later on, but I do some type of squat every time I train legs. You will hear about the rare guy like Dorian who built his legs without squats, but come on— how many people are Dorian? The only thing that’s really changed with me and squatting is that I don’t do them first anymore, and I listen to my body and only go very heavy when my back and my knees are feeling 100 percent.
RH: Does “the right form” on squats look different for different people? Some try to say that everyone should do them a certain way, as in shoulder-width foot stance and exactly to parallel. How did you arrive at the right form for you?
BW: After doing this for over 22 years, here’s what I say. Do whatever works for you. Find the form that feels right. Put the bar where it feels right, put your feet where they feel right, and go down as low as feels right for you. Make all the adjustments you need to. The bottom line is that no matter what, you’re bending down and standing up with weight on your back to overload your legs. Everything else is variable.
JR: Squatting is dangerous enough as it is without making your body do something that’s unnatural for your individual structure and mechanics. We all have different bodies, so I might need to set my feet wider or narrower than you, for instance. Maybe it feels right when your toes are pointing straight ahead, or slightly outward. There is no one way for everyone to squat, and if anyone tries to say otherwise, they’re full of shit or just ignorant.
RH: We often hear about training a lagging body part twice a week to bring it up. Do you think that would make sense for a muscle group as large and as demanding to train as the legs?
BW: I did it for a couple of years and Ronnie did it his entire career. If you do that, you definitely need to cut the volume back. I doubt anybody would be able to handle two workouts that are each two hours long, every week. I saw much better results once I went down to training legs once a week. I think training a body part more often works better with smaller body parts. I did shoulders three times a week for a while and turned them from my weakest body part to a strong one, and I did arms twice a week for a long time to bring them up too. But legs are just a whole lot of muscle mass and they can handle a lot of weight. Maybe you could do them every five days, but not twice a week, unless you’re Ronnie.
JR: If you do it, you can only do one heavy workout. The second workout has to be more of a “touch-up” workout where you’re just aiming to push blood in the quads and hams and get a good pump. If you work as hard as you should on a serious leg day, there’s no way you could do that every three days.
RH: How can the leg press be a very useful tool for building the legs, and how can it be abused?
BW: Any exercise can be done wrong. On the leg press, you do see guys tend to put too much weight on and use a short range of motion.
JR: Right, and it’s especially tempting on the leg press because it’s relatively safe. Your back is supported and you don’t have to balance it. So if a guy wants to feel like he’s strong and maybe try to impress the other people at the gym, he will load the leg press up and bang out those half-reps. He wouldn’t try squatting with twice the weight he can handle, though, at least if he’s got a brain in his head.
RH: It’s been said that leg training is what separates the men from the boys. Agree or disagree? And is it possible for someone to build great wheels with half-assed effort?
BW: Absolutely. Chest training is pretty fun and easy, so is arm training. There’s nothing fun or easy about training legs or back. Those days are going to suck no matter what, if you’re doing it right. And those happen to be the two body parts you won’t ever build unless you really bust your ass and put out the effort.
JR: It’s like anything else you see in the gym. Some people are happy to just go through the motions, where some will go in there and kill it because they’re determined to grow and improve. Like Branch said, things like chest and arm training are fun. You wear a tank top and see that crazy pump. Unless you’re training in posing trunks, which I don’t recommend, you really can’t see your legs very well. And again, proper leg training is a bitch. Not everyone can or will do what it takes to get big legs.
RH: What are some of the reasons you think many bodybuilders never build impressive legs?
BW: Most guys don’t work legs hard enough, and they don’t do enough for them. There are tons of guys out there who only do a couple of sets of leg extensions, leg presses and legs curls and call it a day. No other training day delivers as much pain or fatigue as leg day, and a lot of guys just can’t or won’t deal with that. And I’ll go on record to say that some guys just don’t have the genetics for huge legs. I have seen guys at my gym who train their legs hard, as hard as I do, but their legs never get to that impressive level of development. These are big dudes who have pretty much everything else but the wheels, and if I didn’t know them and hadn’t seen them train, I would assume they didn’t work them hard enough or train the right way. But they do.
JR: I agree that genetics do play a part. But it’s the effort required. Even Branch had to grind out thousands of tough workouts for his legs.
Branch’s Last Leg Workout
Leg Extensions 3 warm-ups: 20-25 reps, increasing weight
3 drop sets stack x 25, cut to two-thirds of stack for 20-25
fourth set same drop, and then back to stack for partial reps
Leg Press 3 warm-ups: 15-20 reps, increasing weight;
3 rest-pause sets: 30-40 reps, rest 3 seconds, 5 reps, rest again, 5 reps, rest, 3 reps, rest, 3 reps, rest, 1 rep, rest, 1 rep
Hack Squats 4 x 10-15
Squats 5 sets, 8-10 reps, increasing weight
Lying Leg Curls 4 x 12
Standing One-leg Curls 4 x 12
Seated Leg Curls 4 x 12
Jose’s Last Leg Workout
Leg Extensions 4 x 10-12
superset with
Single Leg Curls 4 x 12
Leg Press 4 x 10
superset with
Squats 4 x 10
Lying Leg Curls 4 x 12
superset with
Stationary Lunges 4 x 12
Branch’s Training Split
Monday: Chest
Tuesday: Back
Wednesday: Arms
Thursday: Legs
Friday: Shoulders and calves
Saturday: OFF
Sunday: OFF
Jose’s Training Split
Sunday: Light back and chest
Monday: Heavy quads, light hams and calves
Tuesday: (a.m.) Cardio, abs, posing
(p.m.) Chest and triceps, 8-10 supersets lateral raises and rear delts
Wednesday: Back and biceps
Thursday: Shoulders and abs
Friday: Heavy hams, light quads and calves
Saturday: Arms
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