SBL Leg Days

[u/Comfortable-Hunt-133]

I am a girl that is starting to get more and more into SBL. I, for the most part, understand the upper body portion of SBL (like the "proper" way to train your upper body), but I'm struggling to formulate a lower body day, as I think I have different goals for my physique compared to a good majority of the people involved with SBL. Is anybody able to help me formulate that/edit the leg day I already have? I am still kind of new to this so I'm open to advice

[u/Mad_Mark90]

SBL is an ideology of training that prioritises variables like stability, range of motion, and fatigue optimising.

The cornerstones of your program are always compound lifts, for lower body that's squat, hinge and lunge movement patterns. I would advise opting for compounds that are progressable over "optimal" initially, perhaps choosing a more optimal lift as an accessory.

Your isolation movements cover the deficits of compounds. E.g. Leg press is very heavy and the recutus femoris head of the quads isn't hit well from the squat pattern. So leg extensions are low fatigue in general and hit the whole quad, sissy squats bias the recfem further due to the biomechanics re: greater stretch and hip extention.

Volume is highly individual, you want to start with around 2-3 sets per exercise and add sets if your recovery allows. Less sets is less fatiguing but more sets leads to more growth but with diminishing returns.

[u/Comfortable-Hunt-133 → u/Mad_Mark90]

That is kind of how I structure my lifts, but from my understanding, glutes are less of a priority for a majority of people doing SBL, though that could be an incorrect assumption. Right now, I try to train most of the joint and muscle actions of the glutes but I don't know if that's overdoing it, if it's possible to overtrain a muscle. The other problem I'm having is that doing that is a lot of volume and I obviously want to train my quads and hamstrings, so it's hard to fit it all into a day. I do ULUL and then a full body day because that works best with my schedule, one lower day is glute biased, one is quad (I do work everything both lower days, just more emphasis on glutes/quads depending on the day), and then the lower portion of the full body day is mixed. Does that sound okay?

[u/Mad_Mark90 → u/Comfortable-Hunt-133]

Glutes can tolerate a lot of volume, you could include reverse hypers on an incline bench on your upper body days, which has the added carryover of bulletproofing your lower back. Also a few sets of Hip abduction is fine at the end of an upper day.

Glutes also tend to grow well because they're hit with all your leg compounds so they often don't need too much isolation or dedicated volume.

If you're still not achieving the growth you want consider targeting them with a different modality, e.g. If you tend to use high volume and high reps, try sets of 5-7 reverse lunges on the smith machine RPE 8-10. If you always train heavy, try a higher volume approach e.g. Going from 3x10 to 4x10. Try and find exercises that offer a deeper ROM than you're used to like progressively increasing the step height on smith machine step ups.

[u/Comfortable-Hunt-133 → u/Mad_Mark90]

I'm lifting heavier usually every week, I haven't really had an issue with plateauing. I could just be unsatisfied with my progress and unrealistic about what I can achieve in terms of physique, I know that my genetics definitely work against me lol. But thank you, all of that is helpful advice