It is basically all of the muscles that run down the posterior (or rear) of your body and is also one of the most underdeveloped areas on the average gym goers body. If you don’t know what your posterior chain is, chances are that you don’t train it as hard as the anterior (or front – chest, biceps, quads) portion of your body.

What does it do?

The posterior chain acts just like that, a ‘chain’. All of the muscles contract together to straighten your hips and is one of the greatest forces your body can produce. Let’s go into a little more detail.

Gluteus Maximus

This muscle begins along the posterior of the illium, sacrum and coccyx and inserts onto the femur along the posterior and medial aspects. It is one of the key muscles in hip extension.

In English: It attaches the pelvis to your upper leg bone and causes an increase of angle in the hip joint.

Hamstrings

The hamstrings group is made up of three muscles: Biceps Femoris, Semitendinosus and Semimembranosus. These 3 muscles run along the postierior of the femur. They work together to cause hip extension and knee flexion.

In other words, the hamstrings group sit along the back of the thigh. Like Glute Max it causes your hip to straighten and your knee to bend.

Erector Spinae

The Erector Spinae serves the main purpose of control the movement of your spine. It is made of many muscles that attach all the way from the top of the spine down to your pelvis. It causes rotation of the spine, flexion, extension and lateral flexion. It is a key muscle in maintaining a strong spine and back.

Quadratus Lumborum

The Quadratus Lumborum sits on your posterior around you lower back. It starts at your 12th rib and L1-4 and attached along the posterior part of your illiac crest. It’s function is lateral flexion through ipsilateral contraction and extension of the lumbar spine through bilateral extension.

Best exercises to strengthen your posterior chain

The posterior chain is best strengthened by hip extension exercises. Most people have weak glutes so it’s important that you concentrate on contracting your glutes on the concentric (positive) movement.

• Deadlift (and it’s variations: Stiff Leg, Sumo)
• Reverse Hyperextensions
• Pull Throughs

If you are not feeling it in your glutes then you may need to do some glute activation exercises at the beginning of your workout. My favourite are glute bridges.

If you are feeling it only in your lower back, drop the weight back and really focus on squeezing your glutes to pull the weight up.

Improving your posterior chain will increase the overall stabilisation of your body. You will be able to squat deeper and heavier, bent-over row more weight and if you run, cycle or play sport you should notice a huge improvement in these areas. So stop neglecting these important muscles and get training today!

There are a many number of reasons I have found that they choose to neglect this rather large portion of their body from their resistance training regime.

Just last week I was talking to two boys who train at my gym about leg training. They skip this workout every week, their reasoning is that it makes their legs hurt. Being ‘tradies’ (what we call tradesmen in Australia) they spend most of their day on their feet. It would therefore, by their reasoning, be unacceptable to have sore legs the day after a hard leg workout. They make a reasonable point, however the truly bad DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness) decreases dramatically by the second and third leg workout and would be much more bearable. So this really isn’t a worthy excuse for skipping leg training.

Let me make it clear at this point that I am not a Squat or Deadlift Nazi who curses anyone who avoids these exercises. I just believe that a resistance training program should exercise your entire body to keep balance and control.

Another reason I’ve been told for not training legs is that the trainee wishes to maintain mobility and flexibility for playing sport. This is one of the most ridiculous things I have ever heard of and will be the main topic of this article.

Before I go into more detail the final reason I have been told someone doesn’t train legs is due to inflexibility to complete squats, lunges and the like or an injury that prevents mobility. I will also cover these points below and some possible cures to these problems.

Training Legs Will Effect My Performance in Sport

When I refer to sport I’m talking about highly mobile and powerful sports like football, rugby, soccer, hockey, athletics, etc. These are sports that people often want to put on more mass to give them an advantage against their opponents.

Weight

Let’s talk about contact sports first (rugby, AFL, ice hockey, etc). Weight can be very important in these sports, when you come up against an opponent you don’t want to ricochet off them. You want to be able to stand your ground and keep moving.

So tell me, how are you supposed to do this with weak legs? Having a large upper body by simple physics will cause you to become top heavy, making it easier to fall.

Leg muscles are some of the largest in your body, building a solid foundation with leg training will add kg’s of weight to your lower body, making you more stable and overall heavier. This in turn will make it easier to crush your opponents.

Speed

Do you think that an Olympic sprinter does not train their legs with weights? These guys have the fastest and biggest legs around, but it’s not all caused by running.

Olympic level sprint training also involves barbell squats, jump squats, lunges and leg pressing. These guys understand the importance of having strong legs and how adding that strength will also add to their speed during a race.

Mobility

As I wrote earlier, restriction of movement is often a concern of the non leg train gym goers. I can see how this concern has arisen.

Everyday at the gym I see bodybuilders stumbling around the gym with rather large, but nonfunctional legs. They are bent over from tight hip flexors and they can’t bend there knees due to tight hamstrings.

There is a very simple solution to this: stretch! Take 15 minutes after 2-3 of your workouts to give your hips and lower body a great stretch out. Tom Platz, infamous for his freakishly large legs, was still able to do the splits.

I Simply Can Not Do The Exercise

This can be a genuine show stopper but is usually treatable.

For example, some guys can’t do barbell squats imply because of an inflexibility in the shoulders that doesn’t allow them to grab the bar. Or they can sit back in the squat enough and come up onto their toes.

The shoulder problem can be treated by regular visits to an Osteopath and good exercise prescription. The leaning forward on the squat is usually a posterior chain weakness which can be fixed by strengthening these muscles.

Keep an eye out for specific exercise cures in the future.

I Have An Injury

Make sure you seek professional help with any muscular or skeletal injuries that you receive.

If you are like me and have bad knees, strengthening your leg muscles with exercise will actually help with this problem. Resistance training causes the supporting muscles to get stronger which therefore puts less strain on your bad joints.

To begin with, slowly work through a limited range of motion and possibly just single joint exercises until you have restrengthened the area. Slowly move to more complex exercises and don’t hesitate to take some time out if the injury flares up again.

Never ever train through an injury as this will just encourage long term damage and a longer recovery period.

Training Legs Means That I won’t Be Able To Fit Into My Pants

Wear shorts… which are far more comfortable and will show off your new sexy calves.

On a more serious note, you don’t need to have huge legs to be strong and powerful. A bodybuilders leg workout will put some serious mass on your legs but not so much functional use. Instead for the sports person I would recommend heavy lifting mixed with plyometrics and circuit training to achieve the best results.

The Bottom Line

Leg training provides many benefits to your performance in sport and day to day activities and should really always be included in your training. So go on, give a set of pistol squats a go today and get some power into those legs!

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