Skateboard Squats for Huge Quads

Everybody wants a big chest and arms, you dont have to nag people to do bench press or bicep curls.  Many people though neglect legs thinking that they can just wear long pants their whole life long but thats a BBIIIIIIIIIG mistake. 

Finally a home workout for quads that is as good as anything a gym has to offer!  Took me awhile to come up with a safe, effective exercise people can do at home for quads with simple equipment.   Most home exercises for quads work only work for beginners but these puppies you can really load the weight on!  There are very few quad exercises I feel I can safely lift large amounts of weight and this is one of them.  I love the burn and even more I love being so incredibly sore the next days that walking is difficult and going down stairs impossible :)

So, how do you know if you have the dreaded "peg-leg disease"?  Take this simple test, measure the circumference of your chest and measure the circumference of your legs (at the largest point), take the ratio (chest/legs).  If your chest/leg ratio is:

            0 to 1.7            Congratulations, you have thighs of death!

            1.7 to 1.85       Great legs, nicely proportioned to your torso

            1.85 to 2.0       Your legs are lagging a bit but its not embarrassing

            >2.0                 You have severe chicken-leg syndrome

OK, to do these skateboard squats you need a skateboard, a stool, and a used set of dumbbells thats all.  The stool safely limits your range of motion and the dumbbells are held in each hand and provide the resistance.  Important points on form, your knee should never bend more than 90 degrees as this puts lots of strain on the knee and risks injury.  The knee should not extend past the toes, if it does, then move your feet further from the wall. 

To start, grab the dumbbells and slowly start sliding up the wall and then very slowly slide back down again. 

Couple other points.  Do these slowly 1-2s up down.  No bouncing on the stool, its just there for safety.  When you go down just touch it very lightly.  Now lets talk about foot position.  Some people say you should point your toes in, some say you should point them out, I say - use a natural stance.  We want to minimize the stress on the knee joint so stand naturally, look at your feet - that is how they should be angled.  The quads are really strong muscles so you may find that the dumbbells you are using are very heavy and you might need to use wrist straps so that you can hold them long enough - dont want to be dropping the weights.

I know I harp on this a lot, but its really important that you keep everything in balance.  You do legs AND upper body.  And when you do quads you do hamstrings too.  Big quads and tinsy hamstrings not only looks stupid but its really bad for the knee joint.  I actually had knee pain that was being caused from quads being too strong for the hamstrings and they were causing my kneecaps to track incorrectly, brining my hamstring strength into proportion solved the pain.

This video brings up a very important point, please listen to this and save hundreds of your hard earned dollars.  BELIEVE NOTHING YOU SEE!  The first and last scenes of this video are photoshopped (the ones panning down the still images).  In this case it was just to be funny and make a point, and I made sure people know its fake with the popup "photoshopped image", but most people are not so honest.   There are tens of thousands of products out there promising "Gain 20lbs muscle in 8weeks, guaranteed" and they have tons of before-after photos of "satisfied customers" prooving how great their sh*t is.  DONT FALL FOR IT!  These people have no shame, they will do anything to get your money - including altering before-after photographs.  Believe nothing you see, believe nothing you see!  Dont spend your money on fitness supplements/devices/products unless there is solid research (double blind, peer reviewed article in a reputable journal) showing that the product works AND is safe.