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| 2014 NPC Pittsburgh Champ Jason Janov |
Great physiques, great structures, and great teams all have one thing in common. They’re built with a solid foundation from the ground up. Building a physique that’s capable of competing at the highest level takes dedication to put in the work others quite simply aren’t willing to do day-in and day-out, week after week, month after month, and year after year as you construct your masterpiece one grueling training session, and one meal at a time. There may not be anything more grueling or more demanding than experiencing a grueling leg workout on the way to building a solid wheels-of-steel foundation to anchor your physique.
At the 2014 NPC Pittsburgh Championships, Jason Janov brought his mass construction project to the stage and was rewarded with the Heavyweight and Overall titles for his efforts. The Pittsburgh native rocked the house with his incredible structure and brought arguably the best level of conditioning to the show, and nowhere was that more apparent than in his huge, freaky, separated and striated legs. How did Janov build his legs? Read on!
Jason likes to begin each workout with lying leg extensions in order to prioritize his hamstrings while getting some blood pumping in his legs to lubricate the knee joints. He typically does four twenty-rep sets making sure to emphasize the peak contraction and the fully extended stretch at the bottom of the movement in order to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible. Once Jason gets to his fourth set, that’s when the fun begins. Despite the fact that his hamstrings are already on fire, Jason’s fourth set is a torturous lactic acid-producing drop set that doesn’t stop until he reaches 100 total reps!
After he finishes hammering away on his hamstrings like they owe him money, Jason heads over to the rack to continue torching his legs with one of bodybuilding’s most underappreciated mass builders – stiff leg deadlifts. He typically uses four sets of twelve, making sure to maintain strict form as he gets a deep stretch at the bottom of each and every rep, and finishes at the top with a strong contraction of his glutes and hamstrings to ensure he’s recruiting as many muscle fibers as possible.
“If you can master the concept of developing a strong mind muscle connection with the legs during an exercise and let the muscle fight the resistance, your legs will take on a whole new level of development,” Janov encourages.
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Chiseled legs helped Janov in Pittsburgh |
Now that his hamstrings have been thoroughly cooked, he heads over to the leg press to begin the all-out assault on his quads. On a normal leg day, Jason will attack his legs with high volume and short rest periods. His 6 sets of 15 reps can become especially brutal as he pyramids up in weight. “I feel the one major thing holding people’s leg development back is the mind set of moving more weight to get bigger legs. This causes people to train the exercise and not the muscle,” Janov warns.
As they say “The devil is in the details”, and you won’t find many places where lack of paying attention to detail is more glaringly apparent than on a bodybuilding stage. In order to give his lower body a balanced and detailed look, Jason supersets the abductor and adductor machine for three exhausting sets of twenty reps. He maintains the peak contraction at the top of both movements for 1-2 seconds before returning the weight under control and pausing for one second at the bottom of the rep before beginning again. By emphasizing the top and bottom of each movement Jason eliminates momentum and forces his body to initiate with his target muscles.
No leg workout would be complete without incorporating “the king of the mass builders”. Even though his legs are already battered from the beating they’ve taken so far, Jason steps underneath a barbell to blast away another 6-8 sets for 100 total reps. Some days he’ll go as heavy as 315 to complete his century set while only taking just enough rest between sets to catch his breath, before unracking the weight and hammering away until all 100 reps have been completed.
The 2014 contest might be over for Jason, but that doesn’t mean that there still isn’t work to be done. He’s in the gym every day working harder to hone his craft and take his physique to the next level so when he steps on stage at next year’s North American Championships he’ll be ready to do battle – the competition better bring their A game!
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