Intermediate lifter. Changing lifting program to legs twice a week.. advice welcome!

hannahsadler_tn

Hi all. Wanted to throw this out to the community to get some advice on programming and some specific workouts that have worked well for you if you train legs 2x/week.

Some background: I've been lifting on and off since high school, so I consider myself an intermediate lifter. Most recently, I started lifting in mid-June and have built a fairly solid program for myself. I currently do 3 sets of increasing weight and lower reps (10-12 reps first set/6-8 reps second set/2-4 reps last set).

Monday is upper with a focus on compound (bench, OHP, trap/lat/pec work) Wednesday is lower body, and I was using Friday as tricep/upper accessory work. Lately I've been feeling like I'm not being as efficient as I could be with my time in the gym on Fridays and I'm also doing heavy deadlifts and squats on the same day, which is just brutal.

Since I've been on my current program for 15 weeks, I'm ready to change it up. Starting this week I would like to continue to do a 3 day split, with lower days on Monday and Friday and upper body on Wednesday. My question revolves around specific exercises to incorporate on to each lower body day to ensure proper recovery and to maximize my time. I'm debating between two different splits. In the first one, I'd do lighter work on Monday with higher reps, and then Friday would be heavier (85-95% of max) with two full days of recovery before starting Monday again. My other option would be a split with focusing on two different muscle groups. Monday could be hamstrings/glutes and Friday could be quads. I'm wanting to incorporate more lateral plane work and calf work too.

At any rate, I'd love to see some examples of what you do, some advice for how to structure it, and any caveats/challenges you've experienced with training legs 2x/week.

jemhh

I've always done legs 2+ times a week on a 4 day upper/lower split or anywhere from 2 to 4 full body days. I hit hamstrings, glutes, and quads every day, just in a different order (which I change from time to time, along with changing some exercises such as switching out hip thrusts for glute bridges.) Right now I'm doing:

DAY 1
leg curl 3x6-8
squat 3x4-8, 1x12
split squat 3x8-12
glute bridge 3x8-12
frog pump 2x15-25
lying hip abduction 2x30

DAY 2
RDLS 4x6-8
barbell hack squat 3x8-12
glute bridge 4x6-8
deadlift 7-10x2-4 (emom w/lighter weight)

SonyaCele

i do legs mon and fri. I Squat both days, and do deadlifts on friday. And lots of accessory work on both days. Monday is heavy max effort, and friday is dymanic volume/speed work.