How to Build Big Quads: The Best Exercises, Workout Plan, and Complete Guide

Let’s not beat around the bush: there is no easy way to build big quads. Getting your quads to grow can be a monumental task and requires quite a tolerance for discomfort.

In this article, you’ll learn how to build big quads the hard but effective way.

If you’ve been squatting until your eyes bleed but your legs still look like you’re smuggling pool cues in your jeans, read on for the best exercises to build big quads, technique tips, and a proven workout.

The Anatomy: Know Your Quads

Before we get under the bar, you need to know what you’re training. You don’t need a PhD in biomechanics to build big quads, so I’m going to keep things super brief and to the point here.

The “quadri” in quadriceps means four, and “ceps” means head. Good old Latin. That means you have four heads to worry about:

Vastus Lateralis

This is the big slab of muscle on the outside of your thigh, the “outer sweep” in bodybuilding lingo. It gives your leg a wide look from the front and is usually the largest and strongest of the four.

Vastus Medialis

This is the teardrop-looking muscle on the inner part of your knee. It’s essential for knee stability and tracking your kneecap.

Bodybuilders love this guy because it pops right above the knee joint when you do a quad stomp.

Rectus Femoris

The rectus femoris runs straight down the center of your thigh. It’s the unique one of the bunch because it’s the only quad muscle that crosses two joints: the hip and the knee.

Vastus Intermedius

This one sits deep, buried underneath the rectus femoris. You can’t see it, but it adds thickness to your thigh.

Together, the four heads make up the by far biggest muscle group in your body:¹

What Do the Quad Muscles Do?

The main job of the quads is to straighten your leg (knee extension).

Anytime you kick a ball, stand up from a chair, or push the Earth away from you when you deadlift or squat, that’s your quads doing their thing.

Because the rectus femoris crosses the hip, your quads play a small role in lifting your leg up, too.

Big compound exercises like squats hit (almost) everything, but you can tweak how you emphasize different heads with certain exercises and foot positions. To get huge legs, you need to develop all four maximally.

The Best Exercises to Build Big Quads

You don’t need 50 different exercises to grow your quads. You need to do the right ones, and really do them. No going through the motions, no half-reps.

Your quads won’t grow just because you asked them nicely. They need to be forced. You have to give them a reason to adapt, and that reason involves a significant amount of hard work. And discomfort.

One of the biggest reasons lifters can’t grow their quads is because they don’t train hard enough. Anyone can train close to failure on chest or shoulders, but doing so on leg day requires an entirely different mindset.

Fortunately, effective quad training is rather straightforward.

As straightforward as doing squats and leg extensions? Pretty much, with a few caveats.

1. Squat / Front Squat

The squat is and has always been a fantastic leg builder. And in addition to the quads, your adductors and glutes get a great workout, too.

The low-bar squat is great for powerlifting and moving maximal weight because it recruits more of the posterior chain. But for quads, we want the torso upright and the bar higher up on your traps.

Another alternative is the front squat. It forces you upright and absolutely annihilates the quads.

The only problem with squats is that they don’t grow the rectus femoris, so you can’t rely on them as your one and only quad exercise.^{2 3}

And I have to mention the hack squat. If your gym has a good hack squat machine, marry it. It combines the mechanics of a squat with the stability of a machine, and allows you to get a deep stretch at the bottom without putting your lower back at risk. A bad one, on the other hand, is often really bad, to the point where it can feel as if your kneecaps are about to pop off and shoot across the gym.

2. Leg Press

Don’t let the internet tell you machines are for the weak. The leg press is arguably the best pure quad hypertrophy tool because it removes the stability requirement, meaning you can push your legs to absolute failure without worrying about balance and coordination.

Place your feet lower on the platform to hit the quads harder. Moving them up on the platform involves more glutes, which is good if that’s what you want, but for quads, move them down as far as you can without lifting your heels or butt.

Important: If you are loading up the leg press with 1,000 lb but only moving the sled three inches, you aren’t building big quads. You might be building your ego, but that’s about it. Remove enough plates so that you can get a full range of motion and go as deep as your mobility allows.

What about the seated sled leg press? In theory, it can be just as effective for muscle growth, but it has one big disadvantage. I really dislike that you have to start in the bottom position in most machines. You have to basically wedge yourself in and press yourself up to the starting position with your hands on your legs. It makes it awkward to use enough weight to load the quads once you’re in position, and it’s very hard to get there if you have the mobility for a really deep leg press.

How to Do Leg Presses

1. Adjust the machine so that you only need to extend your legs slightly to be able to release the weights. Adjust the safety pins so that they catch the weight if you are unable to lift it.
2. Place your feet on the platform, about shoulder-width apart.
3. Inhale and lower the weight by bending your legs.
4. Lower the weight as deep as possible without rounding your back and while keeping your glutes on the seat.
5. Press the weight back up again as you exhale.

3. Bulgarian Split Squat

I know. I hate them too. But they work. Unilateral (single-leg) training like the Bulgarian split squat makes sure both your legs are equally strong and puts a really nice stretch on the quads.

Depending on how you stand, split squats can be a glute exercise or a quad exercise. To make it into the latter, don’t hop your front foot out too far. You want a shorter stance to increase knee flexion (bending) and hit the quads more. In addition, let the knee travel forward over the toes (don’t listen to anyone saying it’s not safe).

You can also elevate your front foot slightly by standing on a weight plate. Doing so places even more loaded stress on that quad, and stretch under load might build a little more muscle according to some recent studies.

How to Do Bulgarian Split Squats

1. Stand with your back turned against a bench, which should be at about knee height. Stand about one long step in front of the bench.
2. Place one foot on the bench behind you.
3. Inhale, look forward, and squat down with control until right before the knee of the back leg touches the floor.
4. Reverse the movement and extend your front leg again, while exhaling.
5. Inhale at the top and repeat for reps.

4. Leg Extension

The leg extension is the only common exercise that comes close to isolating the quads, with minimal involvement from other major muscles. In addition, unlike squats, it grows all four quad muscles.

You could probably build a pair of great quads using a good leg extension machine only. You wouldn’t get any growth in the rest of the legs, though, and, to be honest, many leg extensions are built in a way that gives you limited (sometimes even crap) tension at long muscle lengths.

If your leg extension machine has a limited range of motion so you can’t get a good stretch (pretty common with today’s machines, sadly), you can place something thick and soft, like a folded yoga mat, between your legs and the pad. You’ll reduce the “dead zone” at the bottom and force your quads to produce more force when they are longer, which, according to research, seems to be a good recipe for growth.

As for when to do them, you have several options:

Option A

• Do leg extensions before heavy compounds (pre-exhaustion). You warm up the knees and tire your quads out so that when you squat, your quads fail before your lower back does.

Option B

• Do them at the end of your workout. Your central nervous system is tired, your stabilizers are shot, but you want to milk every last drop of growth juice out of your quads safely.

There is no evidence that pre-exhaustion is better for building big quads (a preliminary study even says slightly worse).^{4 5} So for most lifters, I’d say go with option B. But if you know you’re going to reach failure in, say, squats because of limitations in other muscles than your quads, pre-exhaustion can be a neat solution.

How to Do Leg Extensions

1. Adjust the machine so that you are correctly positioned. Your knees should be in line with the machine’s joint.
2. Extend your knees with control, until they are completely straight.
3. Slowly lower the weight again.
4. Repeat for reps.

Top Tips for Building Big Quads

Building big quads isn’t about loading up the bar until it bends.

Many lifters more or less accidentally turn their quad exercises into glute and lower back exercises because their technique is off.

Here are my four best technique tips to make sure the tension goes exactly where you want it: straight to the quadriceps.

1. Range of Motion

Partial reps? Partial results. The quadriceps are stretched the most when your knee is fully bent, and, in general, a full range of motion means more lower-body hypertrophy than a partial ROM.⁶

That being said, some studies don’t see a huge difference in quad growth between going ass-to-grass and stopping at parallel. In the leg press, there might be no difference at all.⁷

However, for overall leg growth, deep squats are superior to half squats.⁸

Yes, we’re talking about how to build big quads here, but your quads are only part of your lower body, and squat-type movements are your primary mass builders for the rest of it, with the exceptions of hamstrings and calves.

And if gaining strength is a matter of priority, you want to train in the range of motion you want to get stronger in.

So, for overall leg development, you want your hamstrings to smash against your calves at the bottom of the movement. If your mobility allows, of course.

The good news is that you improve your flexibility and mobility if you consistently train through your full ROM, and before you know it, you’ll be able to go deep without compromising form.

2. Knees Over Toes Is Good

Old-school gym coaches used to scream that if your knees went past your toes, they would explode (your knees, that is, not your toes). Science has since proven that healthy lifters can safely let their knees travel forward naturally and that trying to avoid it can increase stress on the hips and lower back instead.^{9 10}

To maximize quad focus, let your knees travel forward naturally over your toes as you go down into a squat for more quad emphasis. If you sit back (like when you sit down on a toilet), you shift more of the load away from the quads and toward your hips.

3. Master the Eccentric

Bouncing out of the bottom of a squat uses elastic energy (your tendons acting like rubber bands) in addition to pure muscle fiber strength. It saves energy and gives you a great “pop” out of the hole, which is great for powerlifting, at least for starting the lift.¹¹

It’s not as good for hypertrophy, however. The eccentric (lowering) part of a lift is at least as important as the concentric when it comes to stimulating growth.¹²

How fast you perform a rep isn’t very important for muscle growth per se.¹³ But the eccentric action is, so you want to control your reps. Don’t just drop; resist gravity. Lowering the weight for a count of 2 to 3 seconds is good practice for most.

4. Quick Cheat Code: Elevate Your Heels

If you have stiff ankles (like many lifters do), you naturally lean forward when you squat to keep from falling over. The more you lean forward, the more you shift the workload to your hip extensors and spinal erectors.

Raising your heels a little allows your knees to travel further forward and makes it much easier to keep your torso upright. You increase the knee moment arm, which allows the quads to do more of the heavy lifting.

The slightly expensive (but best) solution is to buy a pair of good weightlifting shoes. A 25 mm heel elevation is ideal for most.¹⁴

The free option is to simply stand on small 5 lb plates. It’s potentially less stable but will work in a pinch.

Quick Checklist for Your Next Quad-Focused Leg Day

• [ ] Heels up (shoes or plates).
• [ ] Knees naturally forward over toes.
• [ ] Chest up/upright torso.
• [ ] Control the eccentric.
• [ ] Long range of motion.

The Tree Trunk Quad Workout Routine

You want big quads? You have to train them. With intensity.

Here, I’m going to present a great quad workout for muscle and strength, targeting all four quadriceps muscles at different muscle lengths, angles, and positions with a wide variety of loads and rep ranges.

Exercise	Sets	Reps	Notes
Squat	3	5	Go heavy and as deep as you can with good form. Rest 3–5 minutes between sets.
Bulgarian Split Squat	3	10	Short step forward, upright torso.
Leg Press	3	15	Feet lower on platform. Control the negative.
Leg Extension	3	20	Squeeze at the top and adjust the machine to get as good a quad stretch at the bottom as possible.

Do this routine once or twice a week, either as a standalone quad workout (some prefer splitting quads and hamstrings up) or as part of a complete leg day. If you go for the latter, add some leg curls, Romanian deadlifts, and (optionally, if you train them) calf raises, and you’re good to go.

Every time you enter the gym, try to do a little more than last time. Add a small plate to the bar, move the selector pin on the machine down a notch, or do one more rep. This is progressive overload, and it is the primary catalyst of growth.

This quad workout works best for intermediate-level lifters and above. If you’re a beginner, it’s likely a bit too much at the moment, and you’ll get better results with one of our free beginner programs for building muscle:

• Beginner Barbell Program
• Beginner Strength Training Program
• Bodybuilding for Beginners

Track Your Quad Training in StrengthLog

This is one of the many free workouts in our workout log app, StrengthLog.

The app makes it super easy to keep track of your weights and reps and ensures you’re on the right path.

It remembers what weights you used in your last session, and automatically loads them into your next one. And trying to improve on your last workout is the number one factor for improving, building muscle, and getting stronger.

Download it and start tracking your gains today!

StrengthLog is free to use, and so is this workout.

Quick Note on Nutrition for Building Big Quads

Training your quads hard and heavy makes them grow. But you also need to eat enough food to fuel that growth.

This article is more about the training part of the quad equation, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention how important, crucial even, your nutrition is. If you skimp on your diet, you’ll likely be spinning your wheels instead of building them.

• Eat like a bird, get legs like a bird. To build muscle, you generally want to be in a slight caloric surplus, or at the very least in calorie balance. Your body becomes much more willing to add new muscle tissue when it senses that it has energy to spare.
• Protein is the number one nutrient for growth. Aim for roughly 2 grams of protein per kg of bodyweight (that’s around 1 gram per lb).
• Leg day is the best day to load up on carbs. You don’t have to pound the pasta like a long-distance runner, but many lifters feel that they can push harder with muscles loaded with glycogen. Don’t fear the rice and potatoes.

Final Rep

Building massive quads isn’t rocket surgery: train hard, recover, grow. However, unless you have amazing genetics, you’ll have to train them more intensely than most other muscle groups.

Going to failure on chest presses is one thing; doing so on barbell squats is another thing entirely. If you whistle as you walk out of the gym with a bounce in your stride after leg day, you probably didn’t go hard enough.

But if you are willing to go that extra mile, the exercises, tips, and workouts we’ve just talked about should help you land the quads you want. As long as you don’t skip too many leg days.

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Last reviewed: 2025-12-18

References

1. Large and Small Muscles in Resistance Training: Is It Time for a Better Definition? Strength and Conditioning Journal 39(5):p 33-35, October 2017.
2. J Sports Sci. 2021 Oct;39(20):2298-2304. The role of exercise selection in regional muscle hypertrophy: A randomized controlled trial.
3. J Strength Cond Res. 2025 Dec 12. Comparison of Muscle Hypertrophy and Strength Adaptations Induced by Back Squat and Leg Extension Resistance Exercises.
4. Strength and Conditioning Journal, August 15, 2025. Advanced Resistance Training Strategies for Bodybuilding: Tools for Muscle Hypertrophy.
5. SportRχiv. (2025). Front-loading fatigue: Does the pre-exhaustion method influence resistance training-induced muscular adaptations?
6. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2021 Oct;31(10):1866-1881. Effects of range of motion on resistance training adaptations: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
7. J Sports Sci. 2025 May;43(10):986-994. Knee flexion range of motion does not influence muscle hypertrophy of the quadriceps femoris during leg press training in resistance-trained individuals.
8. Eur J Appl Physiol. 2019 Sep;119(9):1933-1942. Effects of squat training with different depths on lower limb muscle volumes.
9. J Clin Med. 2023 Apr 19;12(8):2955. The Limitations of Anterior Knee Displacement during Different Barbell Squat Techniques: A Comprehensive Review.
10. Front Sports Act Living. 2024 Nov 19:6:1477796. Impact of the deep squat on articular knee joint structures, friend or enemy? A scoping review.
11. J Strength Cond Res. 2026 Jan 1;40(1):1-8. Acute Effect of the Bounce Squat on Ground Reaction Force at the Turning Point and Barbell Kinematics.
12. J Strength Cond Res. 2025 Jan 1;39(1):115-134. Comparison Between Eccentric vs. Concentric Muscle Actions On Hypertrophy: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
13. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 39(12):p 1331-1339, December 2025. How Slow Should You Go? A Systematic Review With Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Resistance Training Repetition Tempo on Muscle Hypertrophy.
14. Appl. Sci. 2025, 15(5), 2471. The Influence of Different Heel Heights on Squatting Stability: A Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis.