Do you skip leg day? I’m not convinced that avoiding leg day is anything other than a meme. But there can be no doubt that some people do get apprehensive about lower body training in commercial gyms.
And it’s not hard to see why. Commercial gyms tend to cater to a whole range of upper body needs. But when it comes to leg training options, they are often quite lacking.
For instance, while many gyms have machines that will let you hit your chest from all sorts of angles, I can’t remember the last time I went to a gym with a calf raise machine.
And sure, you are bound to find leg extension and leg curl machines in most commercial gyms, the reality is, besides the really quite pointless abductor/adductor machines and the leg press machine, many gyms don’t really cater to leg training.
Home gyms, on the other hand, are a Promised Land for leg training enthusiasts. Here’s why.
Why Commercial Gym-goers Are More Likely to Skip Leg Day
When it comes to training legs, unless you are a bodybuilder, most people will want to focus heavily on compound movements.
And that will inevitably lead you to some variation of the squat and the deadlift.
While I favour the low bar squat and the conventional deadlift, you can also go far with high bar squats, safety squats, front squats, trap bar deadlifts, stiff-legged deadlifts and Romanian deadlifts.
However, these are not always easy to execute in a commercial gym.
Smaller gyms typically only have one squat rack. Even some larger gyms don’t have more than one rack. Sometimes, there will be a PT area equipped with a second rack, but general gym-goers aren’t usually allowed to use it.
That means that you may arrive at the gym intending the squat, but instead have to wait in line for someone to finish their workout.
You can, of course, try to “work in” with someone – lift your weights while they’re resting between sets.
But if you’ve ever tried this, you’ll know that it is generally very awkward. You feel like you have to hurry up. Or maybe you manage to get to the rack while it’s empty, but then another lifter wants to use it, so you feel pressured to rush your rest breaks.
Or maybe the rack also holds one of the gym’s only pullup bars, so you find people trying to jump onto this when you’re resting.
You get my point. It’s not an optimal experience.
No Deadlift, No Joy
Deadlifts can be even worse. Some gyms flat-out ban deadlifts. Others allow them, but want you to lower weights to the floor quietly.
Most don’t have dedicated lifting platforms, so you are essentially lifting from the rubber tiles they lay out to protect the floor.
And even if your local commercial gym doesn’t have a no-deadlifting policy, you are probably going to feel quite self-conscious about lifting very heavy and then simply having to drop the bar – laden with super-clanky metal plates – onto the floor.
And well you might. Most people in the gym with you didn’t come to lift really challenging weights. They came to jog or walk on a treadmill, do some tricep cable pushdowns, post something on Instagram and get out.
(We Have) Leg Training at Home
When I lift heavy in my home gym, I grimace, I sometimes grunt, I sometimes drop the bar with such force I’ve been told that people down the bottom of the street can hear.
Lifting heavy for the lower body is ugly, it’s undignified, it’s borderline antisocial.
But a home gym solves all of that and more. The squat rack is always empty, there aren’t any “no-deadlifting” rules. Nobody cares if you grimace or grunt.
Better still, you can’t really ego-lift without an audience. If you hit a PB in your home gym, it’s between you and the bar. If you fail with a lift in a commercial gym, there’s a little piece of you feels shamed and weak in front of the other gym-goers.
Perhaps if you are a powerlifter and you frequent a powerlifting gym, you may disagree with my take on all this.
But in most cases, it is hard to argue against the fact that leg day just works better at home. Skip leg day? Not if you own a home gym.
