Quad Exercises
The quadriceps are four muscles on the front of your thigh. All four join at a tendon over the kneecap and straighten the knee. One of them, the rectus femoris, also crosses the hip and helps to lift your thigh forward. You use your quads to stand up from a chair, climb stairs and land from a jump. Any exercise with a deep knee bend under load trains them. The main patterns are squats, lunges and split squats, and step-ups. The leg press and the hack squat train the same pattern on a machine. The leg extension isolates the quads with no load on the hips or back.
8 exercises with male and female illustrations.
Start here
Beginner picks: easy to learn and easy to load.
Squat
Lunge and single leg
Questions
How deep should I squat for my quads?
Go as deep as you can with a neutral back and your heels down. In a 10-week study, full squats and half squats gave similar growth in the main quad muscles, but the full squat gave more growth in the glutes and the inner thigh. A deeper squat trains more of the leg for the same exercise.
Can I build my quads without weights?
Yes, if you make the exercise hard enough. Move from bodyweight squats to split squats, Bulgarian split squats and then pistol squats. Single-leg versions put your full body weight on one leg, which is a large load for the quads.
Is the leg press as good as the squat for quads?
Both train the quads well. The leg press supports your back and needs no balance, so you can push your legs close to failure with less skill. The squat needs more balance and trunk strength and trains the glutes and back muscles as well.