6 Best Leg Exercises - Dennis Wolf Shares His
6 Best Leg Exercises - Dennis Wolf Shares His Most Productive
Dennis Wolf has a physique that stands out as unique from the rest of the top stars in the IFBB, and he’s also got his own workout style. He’s tried pretty much all the exercises out there, and kept the ones he feels are most productive— whether they are “supposed” to be the best or not. Here’s his guide to his six most favored leg movements.
1) Squats
When I started doing these:
“It was a six months or so after I started working out. But then, I saw the guys with the big legs did squats. I wanted huge legs and they said this was how to get them.”
Why this exercise has stayed in my routine:
“Squats are the very best exercise for legs. They hit your quads, and also your hams and glutes. I just feel better if I do them. If I don’t squat at a leg workout, I feel like something was missing or I slacked. If you look at all the guys with the best legs like Ronnie, Branch, Kai, and Jay, they all did a lot of squats.”
Do you do this exercise every week?
“I do them every other week, alternating with hack squats. If I don’t squat, I will still do a set or two of Smith machine squats toward the end of the workout, because the squatting motion is so important.”
Do you have any personal adjustments you’ve made to it?
“I go very deep, below parallel. Don’t go by the photo here because it shows me in the middle of a rep! I feel the thighs working much harder if I do deep reps.”
Do you consider yourself strong on it?
“I can be. I’ve done plenty of sets in the past with five or six plates on each side. I’ve done 585 for 8 reps, but I can’t get as deep with that much weight and it also wrecks me for the rest of the workout. There is also the safety issue again. So most of the time, I will stay with 405 to 455 pounds for sets of 10.”
2) Hack squats
When I started doing these:
“It was about a year after I started working out. I didn’t even train legs at all for the first six or seven months in the gym, by the way. I wasn’t interested in anything but upper body— mainly shoulders, chest, and arms— at the very beginning.”
Why this exercise has stayed in my routine:
“Squats give you raw size, but I think hack squats are better for that outer sweep. Because I have such wide shoulders, my quads need a lot of sweep or else they look narrow from the front.”
Do you do this exercise every week?
“Every other week.”
Do you have any personal adjustments you’ve made to it?
“Because I’ve had a major knee injury in the past, I don’t go too heavy, I never put my feet too low on the platform or too close together, and I never bounce out of the bottom. I hear a lot of people complain hacks hurt their knees. If they followed those same guidelines that I do, they would probably be able to do them without pain.”
Do you consider yourself strong on it?
“I know I’m not weak on it. I can pile a few plates on. The weird thing is that I get stronger on this— on everything, really— when I prepare for a contest. I think it’s because I’m eating a lot more clean food then.”
3) Leg extensions
When I started doing these:
“This was the first thing I ever did for legs, this and the leg press.”
Why this exercise has stayed in my routine:
“They are a perfect way to warm-up the knees and the quads before you go on to leg presses, squats, or hack squats. I also think they help improve separation in the quads.”
Do you do this exercise every week?
“Yes, I do four sets of these at every leg workout. On some off seasons, I didn’t do any extensions. I was trying to put all my energy into compound movements to build more mass in the quads.”
Do you have any personal adjustments you’ve made to it?
“I switch up my style on them. Sometimes I keep the weight moving, and other times I stop every rep at the top and flex the quads.”
Do you consider yourself strong on it?
“No, because if my knees are hurting I don’t go heavy at all. If they feel fine I can do good sets of 12-15 reps with the stack. So I guess sometimes I am stronger, or able to use more weight, I should say.”
4) Lying leg curls
When I started doing these:
“Once I started training legs, I did these.”
Why this exercise has stayed in my routine:
“I like the lying leg curl and consider it my main hamstring exercise. It’s very basic, like the barbell curl is for biceps.”
Do you do this exercise every week?
“Yes, for sure. Even if I also do another type of leg curl, which I usually do, the lying version is what I do first.”
Do you have any personal adjustments you’ve made to it?
“Sometimes I get up on my elbows for a different feel. I got that from Robert Burneika, and he got it from Charles Glass. I also like to occasionally pick one part of the range of motion to focus on for the set, like partial reps, and change it to another part of the range of motion on the next set. It’s just a good way to mix things up.”
Do you consider yourself strong on it?
“No idea. I use good form and really squeeze the hams. I could go a lot heavier if I didn’t care about that.”
5) Single leg curls
When I started doing these:
“I didn’t do these until I left the first gym I started out at, and went to another one. The first gym only had one leg curl, and it was the lying leg curl. This place only had the standing leg curl! Most gyms in Germany don’t have a wide variety of equipment to choose from.”
Why this exercise has stayed in my routine:
“It’s got a different feel to it than lying leg curls, and I really believe it helps give the hamstrings more hang in the side poses.”
Do you do this exercise every week?
“No, I always do lying leg curls; but I alternate my second leg curl with either the standing or the seated leg curl. So I do them every other week.”
Do you have any personal adjustments you’ve made to it?
“No, just the regular way. I just make sure I get a full range of motion and a nice squeeze.”
Do you consider yourself strong on it?
“Probably not. I am more focused on the contraction and the stretch. Maybe to an average person it would still seem strong.”
6) Seated calf raises
When I started doing these:
“It was a couple years after I started training. The first gym only had a standing calf raise machine.”
Why this exercise has stayed in my routine:
“I really only started doing these consistently over the last couple of years because I kept hearing how terrible my calves are and I was getting sick of it. But now I do see a difference, because without working the soleus I was missing out. My calves aren’t ever going to look like Dorian’s or Jay’s, but they are a little better than before.”
Do you do this exercise every week?
“Yes. Twice a week, actually.”
Do you have any personal adjustments you’ve made to it?
“No, I just make sure I get up all the way for a full contraction, and then lower so my heels are under the platform for a full stretch. I see a lot of guys who don’t do that.”
Do you consider yourself strong on it?
“Not at all. My calves are not as strong as my quads and hams, which makes sense. There’s not as much muscle tissue there to move the weight. And because I want to do the exercise right, I don’t pile on so many plates that I can only do little half-reps with.”
