Barbell squats

  Without question, squats are the top-ranked result-producing bodybuilding exercise. If you want to pack on pounds of solid muscle weight all over your physique, then give your all to squatting properly. And certainly this is the most effective leg building exercise that one can undertake with weights. 

To perform the squat properly, stand erect with a barbell across your shoulders and take a deep breath. Now, with your lungs full, bend your knees and lower your body until you are in a full squat position; you should be slightly below a ninety degree angle to your shins. As soon as you reach the bottom position, rise immediately— but under control—while at the same time expelling the air from your lungs, so that you will be ready for another intake of oxygen at the completion of the movement. Breathe in, and down you go for your second repetition, and so on until the required number of repetitions have been completed. It is important to keep your head up at all times, and your chest should be held high. Some bodybuilders accomplish this by fixing their gaze on a spot two to three feet above eye level until the movement is fi nished. Also, some trainees prefer to perform squats with a small board under their heels to improve their balance. If you feel your balance is off somewhat, which it may be, owing to innate variations in bone structure, by all means utilize a board. Squats strongly affect the quadriceps, the fourheaded muscle that makes up the bulk of the frontal thigh, the main action of which is to straighten the leg and to flex the hip. 

  

  As soon as you have completed your set of squats, you will immediately pick up a barbell and perform your second exercise, pull-overs. This immediate transfer from one exercise to another is known in bodybuilding circles as a “superset,” and you will be using it only for the fi rst two exercises. Then you can take a sixty- to ninety-second breather.