Building Massive Legs with Branch Warren & Dennis Wolf
Building Massive Legs
Branch Warren & Dennis Wolf Master Class
Branch Warren and Dennis Wolf are indisputably two of the best bodybuilders of this generation. Between them, they have 14 pro wins including three Arnold Classic titles, and an even 10 top-five finishes at the Mr. Olympia. While their physiques may be vastly different in shape and structure, they do have one thing in common: excellent leg development. I got both of these IFBB veterans to open up about all things leg training. They agreed on some subjects, and begged to differ on others, proving that there is more than one way to build monster legs.
Are your training styles fairly similar? How about specifically when it comes to leg training?
DW: We have completely different styles. Branch does a lot more sets than I do in general. I train with less volume for legs. If I did a lot more for them, they would be a lot bigger, and throw off my balance. Another reason I don’t do more is how sore I get. If I do more than three or four exercises each for quads or hams, I can’t walk for two or three days.
BW: I get sore, but not like that. I can’t say how different the way I train legs is from what Dennis does, but I think most guys at our level have pretty similar styles that we have adapted to our own needs. I do more for my legs because I just feel they need it. That’s the way I learned to train them, and that’s the only way that feels right. It takes a lot for my legs to really get that feeling that I’ve done everything I could for them in any given workout. Legs can take a beating.
Did either one of you pick up any tips from the other?
DW: I don’t know about tips exactly, but Branch always motivates me with his intensity. He is all about 100 percent effort and concentration. I wasn’t trying to learn anything from him. We’re both pros. I know my body and what I need to do at this point, and so does he. I trained back with Branch and Flex Lewis before the Pittsburgh show a couple of years ago. After three exercises, I was done. I like to control the weight and squeeze the target muscle more; Branch really doesn’t.
BW: Like he said, we both know what our bodies need. My style of training wouldn’t be the best way for him, and vice versa. You do have to try different things, but you also need to figure out what works best for you and stick with it. That goes for anything.
On a scale of one to 10, how much do you enjoy training legs?
BW: Ten. My favorite training day is probably legs. It’s the toughest and it hurts the most, so it’s the biggest challenge. I love a challenge.
DW: When I’m heavy in the off-season, I hate training legs. I get winded a lot more easily from things like squats, hacks and leg presses. Let’s say it’s a six then. When I’m in prep, everything feels better. I’d say it’s a nine then. The difference in my bodyweight isn’t even that much, which is the funny thing. At 300 pounds, I am not too comfortable. Once I get down to about 285, I can breathe and move around a lot easier.
Do you see any benefits to having separate workouts for the quads and hams?
BW: Personally, I’ve tried it and I didn’t like it. But if your hamstrings are really lagging, that’s probably the way to go. You can feel the hams better and get a better pump in them if you do them in their own workout.
DW: Because my hams were lagging behind my quads for a long time, I thought it might be a good idea to do them on their own day. That worked out pretty well.
How easy or difficult have calves come for you?
BW: When I started lifting, all I had were big calves. My mom has ‘em, too. They got bigger when I started working them, but they were already a good size to start with.
DW: Calves have always been a pain in the ass for me! Right after I finish training them and they are fully pumped, they actually look OK. Not great, but not too bad. That’s in the off-season, though. When I start dieting for a show, my calves are the first thing to flatten out on me. I train them at every workout now at the beginning, whether I am doing chest, arms, legs or whatever that day. Every few weeks, I will take four to seven days off to let them recover. My calves really aren’t that small, but they look small compared to my legs because I do have pretty big legs. One of my calves is a lot smaller than the other, as most people have noticed. I had an MRI done on it two years ago, and they couldn’t find anything wrong. I don’t know if it’s a nerve injury or what. I keep foam rolling it and stretching it, so hopefully I can at least get it back to matching the other calf. I’m not giving up.
Do you train legs as hard now as you ever did, or have you settled into more of a maintenance mode with them?
BW: I’d say that I train them as hard now as I ever did in my life, and definitely harder than I did for a few years. I had to back off on legs for about six years in all, so my upper body could catch up. That whole time I still trained them hard, but only once or twice a month. For almost a year before I won the Nationals, I actually stopped working legs completely. Now I train legs with Johnnie, and Brian Dobson trains us. Brian comes up with some absolutely brutal workouts. The only real difference I see now is that it takes me a little longer to recover from leg workouts. They seem to take more out of me at 40 than they did at 20.
Ah, so you are a human being after all. How about you, Dennis?
DW: I used to train my legs harder than I do now. When I was younger, I needed to keep building them up. They really don’t need to be any bigger now. But at times, I do feel extra motivated to do a tougher leg workout than usual. On those days, I will do more sets and also some things like drop sets and supersets.
Time to talk actual 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 that I also needed to do extensions first, 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.
DW: I didn’t do squats in the very beginning. For the first year I was in the gym, I didn’t even train legs at all. Then when I started, all I did was leg extensions, leg presses and leg curls. I must have had some really good genetics in the legs, because they grew pretty big just from that. Eventually I decided to try squats, and they actually became my favorite exercise for a long time. After I hurt my knee really badly squatting in 2002, I stopped going rock bottom. Since then, I just go down to parallel. I don’t think you need to go any further than that, and for a lot of guys it’s eventually going to lead to knee problems. I do like to keep my torso perfectly upright, with no forward lean at all. I have tried doing front squats at a few points in my career, but they hurt my shoulders. The other big change from what I used to do before is that I just don’t squat as heavy as I used to. Years ago, I would go up to 500 pounds or even heavier. Now, I usually don’t use more than 405, but I control the reps very well and I feel the quads working from top to bottom.
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 27 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.
DW: We are not exact clones of each other. We have different bone structures and body mechanics. So there should and will be some differences in the way we squat so that it’s most effective and least dangerous for us. I found years ago that if I kept my knees and feet facing forward, it hurts my knees. If I turn my feet out a little bit, no pain. You might have to put your feet at shoulder width, or maybe wider, a little wider or a lot wider. I think if you keep doing a certain type of form that’s not natural for you, sooner or later you will hurt your lower back, your knees or both.
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 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.
DW: Nobody is Ronnie except Ronnie! I know that if I train legs hard, and I always do, it’s impossible to train them again three days later. They’re still sore. I can’t recover that fast and I don’t think many other people can, either. As for Ronnie, he was able to train legs heavy twice a week for all those years, but look at him now. He’s had four spinal surgeries, and both of his hips had to be replaced. Once a week is best, I think.
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.
DW: The leg press is a very important exercise, because you can feel different parts of the quads working when you change your foot position closer or farther apart, or higher or lower on the platform. You can even make the leg press work more hams and glutes. I don’t squat at every leg workout, but I always use the leg press.
How do you warm up on leg day?
BW: I start off with plenty of leg extensions to get the blood flowing around the knees, and pump the quads up.
DW: I like to get on a stationary bike and ride at a pretty good pace for five minutes before I do anything with weights or machines.
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, and 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.
DW: To me, legs are the toughest thing to train. Almost everyone hates to train legs, even if they love to, if that makes any sense. You’re never going to throw up from a hard arm workout. But you can definitely puke training legs. I usually need a trash can near me on leg day because I have puked so many times.
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 leg 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.
DW: I think the biggest mistake people make with legs is they use too much weight and don’t get much range of motion with the reps due to that. You see them doing five or six half-reps with 405 in the squat or with all the plates the leg press can hold, when they should use half that weight and do 10 or 15 full reps. I agree with Branch that many guys just don’t train them hard enough. It’s hard to breathe, and your whole body hurts if you work them very hard. For me, one hour of leg training is like three hours of doing chest or back. It just kicks your ass.
Are you happy with your legs now, or is there any aspect of them you would like to improve?
BW: I was always pretty satisfied with my legs. They were never something I ever had to worry about until I tore my quad. All I wanted after that was to get the size back in my right leg that I lost after that happened, and I did. What nobody knows is that my right thigh was always a half-inch smaller than my left thigh anyway. No matter how symmetrical someone looks, one limb is always going to be bigger than the other.
DW: I am happy with the size of my legs. They almost overpower my upper body in some poses. I’m always after deeper cuts and more separation and striations in them. You can never have too much detail.
Branch, how would you rate your legs against Dennis’?
BW: Dennis has really good legs. The overall mass is up there, and he has greater outer quad sweep. I give him a lot of credit for bringing up his hamstrings over the 10 years he’s been a pro. They really have a hang and a drop to them now. When he first started competing as a pro, they were kind of flat. His calves could be a lot better, but that’s mainly genetics. I’m sure he has put a ton of work into them.
And finally, Dennis, it’s a question not many bodybuilders love to answer, but how would you rate your legs against Branch Warren’s?
DW: It’s really hard to compare our legs. His legs are a lot shorter than mine. He has better striations in his quads, and more of a grainy look to his legs than I do. Mine have a different shape. Because I am almost a half-foot taller, it’s possible that my legs are actually bigger than his, if you took a tape measure to them. My sweep is better. Let’s just say I think we both have some of the best legs in bodybuilding!
Branch Warren’s Leg Workout
Leg Extensions 3 warm-ups: 20-25 reps, increasing weight
3 Drop Sets stack x 25, cut to 2/3 stack for 20-25
4th Set same drop, 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
Lying Leg Curls 4 x 12
Standing One-leg Curls 4 x 12
Seated Leg Curls 4 x 12
Branch Warren’s Training Split
Monday: Chest
Tuesday: Back
Wednesday: Arms
Thursday: Legs
Friday: Shoulders and calves
Saturday: OFF
Sunday: OFF
Dennis Wolf’s Leg Workout
Tuesday: Quads
Leg Press or Hack Squat 4 x 12-15
Vertical Leg Press 4 x 12
Leg Extensions 4 x 12-15
Dumbbell Walking Lunges 3-4 sets of 10-15 steps per leg
Thursday: Hams
Seated Leg Curls 4 x 12
Lying Leg Curls 4 x 12
Standing One-leg Curls 4 x 10-12
Good Mornings or Stiff-leg Deadlifts 3 x 10-12
Glute Kickback Machine 4 x 12
Every Other Day: Calves
Standing Calf Raises 8 sets of 10-15 reps (increasing weight)
Seated Calf Raises 6 sets of 8-12 (increasing weight)
Dennis Wolf’s Training Split*
Monday: Chest
Tuesday: Quads
Wednesday: Arms
Thursday: Hams
Friday: Delts
Saturday: Back
*Calves are done every other day.