Thigh & Mighty

Take the frills out of your leg program with this high-intensity, pump-inducing shock routine that helped Ronnie Coleman carve out Mr. Olympia–caliber wheels.

- Ronnie Coleman

THOSE OF YOU WHO HAVE followed my career know how hard I used to hit the gym leading up to all eight of my Mr. Olympia wins. Without a doubt, the hardest sessions were my leg days. Many of you have seen my 800-pound squat,which I hit for two reps. (Light weight, baby!) Despite my affinity for going hard and heavy, though, I didn’t train like that all the time. Every once in a while, I threw a curveball into my leg training to stimulate more growth. To get big quads, you need to implement heavy sets of free-weight squats. To carve out the definition required to win a Sandow, however, you need to endure mind-numbing, high-rep sets that give you a quality pump. Which is why, twice a month or so, I’d do the workout you see on these pages. I call it my “Thigh & Mighty” routine. It revolves around a brutal intensity technique—one far more difficult than supersets and giant sets—called descending sets.