Stronger Legs Workout | Stephanie Sanzo, aka StephFitMum

Chest and biceps training get all the hype, but it’s leg training that separates the otherwise mundane from the truly elite lifters.

Primeval Labs athlete and powerbuilder Stephanie Sanzo is back with another muscle and strength building leg workout to help you build a bigger, stronger, and more defined lower body.

Here’s the workout:

Stephanie Sanzo Nutrition Tips

Training can only take you so far. If you want to continue to build muscle and strength in the gym, your nutrition needs to receive just as much focus as your training.

Here are some nutrition tips to help you train harder and recover faster direct from Stephanie Sanzo:

“One of my biggest tips is to ensure your eating habits compliment your training 💯 For myself - it’s important that my nutrition helps to improve energy, strength, recovery and muscle definition 🙏”

Here’s 3 quick tips that are worth making a habit:

MEAL PREP

Failure to prepare is preparing to fail! 

Always make sure you’ve got healthy meals available to prevent other tempting options.

DRINK WATER + ADD SALT

Hydration is a key element to your performance and everyday function. Make sure you consume a minimum of 3 litres of water each day and start adding salt to all of your meals to replenish lost sodium from exercise.

TRACK YOUR MICRONUTRIENTS

Everyone’s so focused on the macros that people often forget about the micros! 

Ensure that you include food sources with high levels of iron, potassium, calcium, magnesium, zinc, sodium, vitamin B12, vitamin D, vitamin C (these are my top 10).

Stephanie Sanzo Stronger Legs Workout

Stephanie Sanzo Leg Workout Training Tips

Barbell Back Squat

For powerbuilders like Stephanie, when it comes to building muscle and strength as efficiently as possible in the lower body, there’s really no better option than the bar than the barbell back squat.

But squats don’t just tax the quads and glutes, they really work the whole body. While your legs are doing the lifting and lowering, your abs and lower back stabilizes your truck, making sure you stay upright while squatting down and standing up. Furthermore, your shoulders, arms, and upper back also work to hold the bar in place.

Let’s not forget the cardiovascular component to squatting, either. Your heart and lungs will be burning if you’re really pushing yourself in your squat session!

Yet, as great as squats are for building muscle and strength, sometimes you step under the bar and things just feel a bit “off”. We’ve all had those times when even the bar itself feels a lot heavier than it should.

When Stephanie finds herself in this situation, she likes to take her time and do a few extra warm up sets until she feels comfortable and gets in her squatting groove. If you find yourself in a similar situation, make sure to not rush into your heavier sets. Take your time in the rack and slowly work up until things start jiving as they normally do.

Barbell Walking Lunge

After lunges, Stephanie continues her leg workout with another quad-focused leg exercise in the barbell walking lunge.

Walking lunges are a phenomenal exercise to develop unilateral leg strength, hip mobility, athleticism, and lower body hypertrophy. And for field sport athletes, lunges are also a great way to bridge the gap between strength training in the gym and real-world application of movement, function, and strength.

Lunges are also versatile in that they can be used to stress certain parts of the leg more than others depending on your stride length and torso angle. If you want to focus mostly on building the quads, use a shorter stride and a more upright torso. However, if you want to focus more on the glutes and hamstrings, take a longer stride and lean forward with your torso slightly.

Either way, by the end of your set, your lungs and legs will be screaming!

Single-Leg Glute Kickback

Squats and walking lunges will certainly work the glutes, but to really isolate the glutes, Stephanie like to perform an isolation exercise for the glutes. For this particular workout, her isolation exercise is the single-leg glute kickback performed on a machine.

The benefit of machines is that they provide constant tension on the muscles throughout the entire range of motion. Frequently, when performing exercises free weights, tension is reduced on the working muscles at certain parts of the range of motion.

As you noticed in the video, Stephanie performs these one leg at a time. The reason for doing this is that it allows her to really focus all of her effort on working one side of her body at a time, developing a robust mind-muscle connection, and getting as strong of a contraction as possible each and every time in the glutes. 

At the top of each rep, make sure to hold the point of peak contraction for a second before returning to the bottom slowly under control. Don’t just let gravity do all the work on the way down. Doing so removes tension from the muscle and you lose out on half of the muscle-building potential of each repetition.

Barbell Good Morning

To cap off this stronger legs workout, Stephanie chooses a movement to target the hamstrings in the barbell good morning.

The barbell good morning is a fantastic posterior chain exercise that’s quite frequently neglected by lifters for fear that it is too dangerous to perform.

But, with proper form, the barbell good morning can help athletes of all kinds from powerlifters to physique competitors to Olympic weightlifters. For powerbuilders like Stephanie, good mornings strengthen the hamstrings and glutes as well as help develop hip drive for the deadlift.

Make sure the barbell isn’t riding up too high on your back and resting on your neck as this can place a lot of tension and strain on the neck -- not something you want.

When performing the good morning, Stephanie uses a wider stance as she feels this helps drive more tension into her hamstrings. As with Romanian deadlifts, make sure to initiate the movement by driving the hips backwards as opposed to bending over. This ensures you’re recruiting the proper muscles during the exercises and avoiding unnecessary stress on the neck and lower back.

Stephanie Sanzo Stronger Legs Pre Workout

To fuel her high volume leg workouts, Stephanie turns to Ape Sh*t Cutz.

Ape Sh*t Cutz is a high-energy, hard-hitting thermogenic pre workout scientifically formulated to support increased athletic performance and stamina. And, as you’ve come to expect from all Primeval Labs products, Ape Sh*t Cutz mixes easily and tastes absolutely delicious!

Click here to learn more about Ape Sh*t Cutz and how it can boost your energy, focus, and performance in the gym.