When it comes to building lower body strength and size, it’s important to be able to target specific muscle groups effectively. Knee-dominant/quad-dominant exercises focus on the quadriceps, the four (where the “quad” in quadriceps comes from) large muscles on the front of your thighs (trust us, there are four, whether you can see them or not), and are essential for sculpting an impressive pair of legs.

Understanding these exercises and how to integrate them into your workout routine can significantly improve your overall strength, mobility, and athletic performance. This article will cover what knee/quad-dominant exercises are, highlight the best exercises, and provide tips on how to include them in your fitness program.

What Are Knee-Dominant Exercises?

Knee-dominant exercises are movements that primarily involve bending and extending the knee joint, placing a significant emphasis on the quadriceps. These exercises are called “quad-dominant” because they primarily target the quads, though they also engage other lower body muscles, including the glutes and hamstrings to a lesser extent, depending on the exercise.

Key Characteristics of Knee-Dominant Exercises:

• Primary Movement: Flexion and extension at the knee joint.
• Primary Muscles Worked: Quadriceps, with secondary involvement of glutes, hamstrings, and calves.

Benefits of Knee-Dominant Exercises:

1. Builds Quad Strength: Essential for leg development and balanced muscle growth. This becomes even more critical to keep mobility as we get older.
2. Improves Functional Fitness: Helps make everyday activities such as standing up from a seated position, climbing stairs, and walking easier.
3. Supports Athletic Performance: Key for athletes in sports requiring explosive leg movements, like basketball, soccer, and cycling. Want to increase that vertical jump? Start hitting those quads.
4. Aids in Injury Prevention: Strengthens the muscles around the knee joint, providing better stability and reducing the risk of knee injuries.

Top Knee-Dominant/Quad-Dominant Exercises

This is in no way a complete list of these exercises, just our favorites.

1. Squats

The fundamental movement for lower body strength, targeting the quads, glutes, and hamstrings. Unless you have a medical reason why you can’t, you should be trying to incorporate some sort of squat into your routine. Squats have been proven multiple times to increase testosterone levels in the body¹, meaning they can actually help you see gains in other muscle groups.

Variations include: back squats, front squats, goblet squats, and split squats.Learn more.

2. Lunges

If you were to look up a description of lunges, you’d probably get something along the lines of, “Lunges are a versatile exercise that challenges balance and coordination while targeting the quads.” The real description should be, “Lunges will make you second-guess every decision you’ve made in your life, and make you question why you’re doing them almost every step of the way.” They are that hard. But, I find myself doing them every week, because they work. Your quads, hamstrings, and glutes will all be burning so good by the end of your set.

Variations include: forward, reverse, lateral, and walking lunges.Learn More.

3. Step-Ups

I know, I know. You see step-ups and think of exercise videos with Spandex in neon colors and rolled down slouch socks. But step-ups can actually be an outstanding addition to any lower-body workout, no matter the fitness level. Starting with a simple fitness step and working up to a weight bench or plyo box, step-ups will give your quads a beastly workout, with more hamstrings and glutes getting involved with a higher surface.

Variations include: goblet step-ups, lateral step-ups, crossover step-ups

4. Leg Press

You’ve seen people in the gym do these all sorts of interesting ways. The guy that loads every single plate in the gym on it, then has a friend sit on top, just to move to the weight about a half inch. The person that rolls up like a cinnamon bun at the bottom of the movement. Both great ways to get hurt doing this exercise. If you want to see results, you’ll follow the advice from Jay Cutler above. Move your feet to different positions on the footplate to target different areas of your legs.

Variations include: narrow stance, wide stance, feet high on the footplate, feet low on the footplate

5. Leg Extensions

This exercise certainly isn’t for everyone. If you have had knee surgery, or recurring knee problems, you’re probably going to want to consult your doctor before making these a mainstay in your workouts. This is truly a knee-dominant exercise, with that being the only point of movement. Leg extensions are a great way to get volume into a leg workout, my favorite thing to do is use them for burn-out sets at the end of my workout to really finish off my quads.

Variations include: toes in, toes out, negatives, partials

Related: 5 Best Substitutes for Leg Extensions

6. Wall Sits

This exercise is a little different from the others on this list, since it’s an isometric hold. I was first introduced to wall sits at a soccer camp when I was 12 years old, and based on that you can see how much of an impact they had on me. 60 seconds felt more like 60 years. Once you slide down into position, it won’t be long until you start feeling the burn deep in your quads. But fight through it! You’ll be rewarded with a strong base for squatting.

Variations include: narrow stance, heels raised, single-leg, with forward plate hold

7. Bulgarian Split Squats

Imagine doing a really deep lunge. Ok, now imagine doing a deeper one, and not getting any relief at the top of the movement. Bulgarian split squats take the brutality of lunges and take it up a level by elevating your back foot. A word of caution, make sure you’re within arm’s reach of a railing when going up or down stairs after these bad boys.

Variations include: Zercher BSS, negatives, isometric holds, landmine BSS

How to Incorporate Knee-Dominant Exercises Into Your Workout Routine

1. Balance With Hip-Dominant Exercises: To avoid muscle imbalances, combine knee-dominant exercises with hip-dominant ones (deadlifts, glute bridges), like deadlifts and glute bridges. This ensures that both the anterior (front) and posterior (back) muscle groups of your lower body are equally strengthened.
2. Program Frequency and Volume: Include knee-dominant exercises in your routine 2-3 times per week. For beginners, start with 2-3 sets of 8-12 reps per exercise. Advanced trainees can increase the sets, reps, or resistance based on their strength and fitness goals.
3. Warm-Up and Mobility: Properly warming up with dynamic stretches and mobility drills, focusing on the hips, knees, and ankles, can improve your range of motion and reduce injury risk.
4. Progression and Variation: Progressively increase resistance or complexity, such as adding weights or trying unilateral (single-leg) variations. Introducing changes like tempo adjustments (slower descents or explosive rises) can also challenge your muscles differently.
5. Mind Your Form: Always focus on maintaining proper form to protect your knees and lower back. Use mirrors or seek guidance from a fitness professional if needed.

Wrap-Up

Knee-dominant exercises are a key component of a balanced and effective lower body workout routine. By incorporating a mix of these movements into your program, you’ll not only build stronger quads but also enhance your overall functional fitness and athletic performance.

Remember to balance these exercises with hip-dominant movements, listen to your body, and progress gradually to achieve optimal results. Start including these exercises today, and experience the benefits of stronger, more powerful legs!

Related:Key Exercise Movement Patterns You Need To Train

References:

1. Wilk, Michal, et al. “Endocrine Response to High Intensity Barbell Squats Performed with Constant Movement Tempo and Variable Training Volume.” Neuro Endocrinology Letters, vol. 39, no. 4, 1 Oct. 2018, pp. 342–348, pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30531700/.

“Progressive overload” has been one of the core principles on resistance training to build muscle. I remember being taught about it in college 25 years ago and reading about it in the late, great Dr. Fred Hatfield’s must-read training bible, Hardcore Bodybuilding: A Scientific Approach.

The term refers to gradually adding weight (or reps at the same weight) on an exercise as you are getting stronger.

Progressive overload is nothing new. But despite the fact that it’s almost as old as lifting itself (we all know the story of Milo of Croton who would carry a calf every day, until it reached its adult size, growing stronger as the bull grew larger) and that it is the secret for long-term progress, it’s very often misapplied, misunderstood or not used at all.

It is also, oddly, responsible for a lot of injuries and stagnation!

But how can that be, if it’s the secret for muscle growth?

It’s because people continue to focus on the wrong training elements: They make adding weight (or reps) the life or death goal of their training. To quote the DC training guys: “You must beat the logbook.”

By focusing on the “adding weight/reps at all cost” mantra, you’re opening the door to poor form, cheating, momentum, and adding weight faster than your actual rate of strength gains, which can lead to, at best, stagnation or at worse, an injury.

See, adding weight (or reps) is not the goal.

It’s simply a tool you’re using to keep the exercises you are doing effective.

As you get stronger from your training, recovery, and nutrition, if you keep doing the same reps and weight over and over it just becomes less and less effective, until it is too easy to have any effect on constant muscle growth.

EFFECTIVE REPS, EFFORT LEVEL & PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD

The modern theory of hypertrophy is that to stimulate muscle growth you must accumulate enough effective reps.

What is an effective rep? It could also be called a “hard rep” or more precisely a repetition that require a high level of effort to complete.

Let’s say that you do a set of 10 repetitions with the max weight you can lift for 10 (your 10RM). The first 5 reps are very easy, they don’t require you to strain against the load. As fatigue accumulates during the set, the reps get gradually harder, requiring a higher level of effort. If those first 5 reps are easy, the next two get moderately hard while the last 2-3 require a high level of effort.

The harder a rep is, the more stimulating it is.

That’s because as the reps get harder, and you have to strain against a load that make the reps slow, even if you are pushing hard, your muscle are under a higher level of mechanical tension. And that mechanical tension is the main driver of muscle growth.

In simple terms: No hard reps, no growth!

And that’s where progressive overload comes in.

If you train properly, eat for growth and have sufficient recovery, you should get a little bit stronger with every workout.

Over time, as you get stronger, the same weight done for the same reps becomes progressively easier. This means that your sets get a bit less effective and eventually lead to a loss of effective/hard reps. Until a set can stop providing any stimulus for growth.

That’s why you need to gradually add weight or reps: to keep the sets hard.

ADDING REPS OR WEIGHT?

Both have their pros and cons.

Adding weight

Pros:

• May be more motivating for many. lifters
• Gives better neurological improvements and greater strength gains,
• Can add less central fatigue than adding reps (especially as reps get high).

Cons:

• The smallest possible weight increase often exceeds the true possible weekly strength gain.
• Can more easily lead to using bad form/momentum/reduced ROM just to “get more weight.”
• It may possibly lead to more injuries more easily.

Adding reps

Pros:

• It’s easier to add one rep than the smallest possible load increase (5 pounds most of the time) so you can progress more smoothly.
• Less likely to lead to compensations and form breakdown, less psychologically intimidating.

Cons:

• More reps cause more central fatigue. This can negatively impact the quality of the whole workout.
• It can be harder to maintain focus for longer sets. During long sets, we often stop the set because it “hurts” (lactate accumulation) than because the reps get truly harder.
• On big lifts, higher reps can lead to failure because of being out of breath rather than the muscles being truly challenged (sets of 20 reps squats anyone?).

THE FOOL-PROOF METHOD

Considering these pros and cons, I feel that the best way to use progressive overload is the double progression model.

Simply put, you first increase weight, up to a point, then you add weight.

It looks like this:

I personally recommend keeping your reps from 4 to 12 when training for hypertrophy. You can build muscle with lower or higher reps per set, but to me they have too much drawbacks either from a potential danger standpoint or an excessive fatigue one.

2. For the purpose of the double progression model I like to create training zones of, typically 3 reps: 4 to 6, 6 to 8, 8 to 10 or 10 to 12.
3. Select your zone (e.g. 6 to 8 reps)
4. Select the number of work sets you’ll do (e.g. 3 work sets of 6 to 8 reps)
5. The goal is to use the same weight for all work sets, after warming-up (e.g. 3 work sets of 6 to 8 reps at 100 pounds)
6. When you can use the same weight (100 pounds in our example) for all your work sets (3 in our example) at the top of the selected range (8 in our example) you add weight at your next session. Which will likely bring the reps down, so you build your way back up.

For example:

• Week 1: you get 8, 7, 6 reps at 100 pounds, so you have to keep using the same weight.
• Week 2: you get 8, 8, 7 reps at 100 pounds, you progressed but not enough to add weight.
• Week 3: you get 8, 8, 8 reps at 100 pounds, now you can add five to 10 pounds.
• Week 4: you get 7, 7, 6 reps at 100 pounds, so you keep using the same weight.
• Week 5: you get 8, 7, 7 reps at 110 pounds, you progressed, but not enough to add weight.

You get the idea.

This ensures that load progression is not too fast for your strength gains. Now you can progress for longer and with less risk of stagnation and injuries.

WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU CAN’T PROGRESS ON A LIFT?

Even if you are using the double progression model, you are bound to hit a wall at one point or another. What do you do then?

Well, first make sure that the lack of progress is due to being adapted to the training not because of inadequate rest or nutrition.

If it’s truly the training there are two main options:

The impatient lifter/variety seeker option: if you hit a wall on a exercise (not being able to progress in weight or reps for 3 similar workouts) you can simply rotate to another exercise for that muscle and apply the double progression on that new exercise.

The patient/routine-based option: you can use the triple progression model. In the triple progression model, once you cannot progress in a zone, you switch to a new zone, ideally an heavier one.

For example:

• Start with the 10-12 reps zone and progress as long as possible. When you stagnate you…
• Switch to the 8-10 reps zone and progress in that new zone for as long as possible. Then…
• Switch to the 6-8 reps zone and milk that zone for as long as possible. Then…
• Either switch to the 4-6 reps zone or restart the progression with a new exercise.

REMEMBER

To get maximum muscle growth, the three most important things are:

1. Training at a high enough level of effort (your sets must be taken close to failure to maximize the number of effective reps).
2. Use progressive overload, not to lift more weight for its own sake, but to keep the training effective.
3. Use proper form to impose tension on the target muscle(s)

Everything else is essentially just debate material for social media and doesn’t matter if you don’t get 1, 2 and 3 right.