Painful Pin Prescription by Vinny Galanti I remember the first time I went out to Venice, California. As I was driving from the airport to my hotel, I spotted a fitness supplement type of store and pulled over to go inside. Like it was yesterday, I remember as I walked into the store there was a shirt up on the wall that was for sale. The saying on the front of the shirt said “LEG DAY”, and on the back of the shirt it said “OUCH”, with a little trickle of blood out of the letter “C”. Leg day is what makes or breaks a bodybuilder. I have never been one to have a big squat, in fact I have never been one to have any big lifts, but I have the balls to train hard. I love training, but I love leg day more than any other training day. I think, because I was able to squat 405 in my teens, and my bench press was only about 225lbs, I gravitated towards the squat more. I'm not here to talk about the squat being the king of all exercises, I'm sure you know that already. I am here to talk about how I incorporate not only the back squat, but also the front squat, the smith machine squat, machine front squats, and even the sissy squat-yes, the sissy squat. I am not one to be powerful from the starting gate when first walking into the gym, I always needed to warm up properly. My typical leg day starts out with 10 min on the bike or treadmill to get the blood flowing. For years I have been using the foam rollers on my clients to break up any scar tissue or stiffness in the muscles, but lately I have been rolling on them to get more blood in the area before I start to train my legs. The foam rollers are the long white tube-looking things that can be found in any corner of the gym. Trust me when I tell ya, it hurts at first like a deep massage, but they are great to bring blood to the thigh and hamstring area. After warming up, I start out with leg curls. Usually I focus on getting a lot of blood in the area concentrating on 5-6 sets of about 15 to 20 reps. If I am feeling really good I might jump right into a giant set of leg press for 10 reps right into machine front squats for 10 reps, right into wide stance smith machine squats. I will do 5 sets total of this “circuit” and then go into dumbbell walking lunges going from 50's to 60's. Then for my final set using 70lb dumbbells, I get about 20 steps for each set. I finish up with stiff leg deadlifts, doing 4 sets of 185lbs for 10-12 reps. Now that I'm in full pre contest training, my intensity level is through the roof. The Masters Nationals are no joke, my training has to be as hard as when I trained for the regular Nationals with no stone unturned. I learned early on that high reps worked for me better than heavy weight with low reps, and it is the same formula that I use today. My warm up for leg day is usually the same every workout out, But the actual workout will be different. I don't like doing the same workout back to back. Another killer routine that I like is taking 225lbs on the barbell squat and do each rep very slow taking 5 seconds to lower the weight and the same to raise it up, maybe only getting 7-10 reps but it will feel like 40 reps, and super setting it with sissy squats, leaning way back hold onto a steady poll or bar, and lowering yourself to really stretch out the quads, but do them slow and only short reps--what a pump. After 4 sets of supersetting slow squats and sissy squats, I like to go into heavy dumbbell step ups supersetted with high reps on the leg extensions for 4 sets. Finally, stiff leg deadlifts are always what I use to finish leg day with. I'm a firm believer in training smart, and leaving the ego at the door. I love training and training hard, but leg day is my favorite.