About this workout
Cranky knees do not mean you stop training legs. They mean you change how you load them. This is an eight week, three day per week leg plan built on machines, cables, dumbbells and bands. No barbell squats. No jumping. No landing from anything. The heavy work runs on a leg press, where you set the range yourself and the weight cannot fall on you. This is not medical advice and it is not a fix for anything. It is a way to keep building quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves while you keep the positions that bother you out of your training week.
Who This Program Is For
- Beginners who want to build leg size but have knees that complain about deep squatting, lunging and anything with a landing.
- Lifters coming back to the gym after time away who want to load legs gradually instead of testing what still hurts.
- Anyone who trains at a commercial gym with a leg press, a leg curl, a cable tower and a dumbbell rack.
- People who want the hips and ankles moving better alongside the lifting, not as a separate project.
Who this is NOT for: anyone whose knee hurts sitting still, anyone looking for a diagnosis, a rehab plan or a return to sport protocol, and anyone who wants a squat number to go up in the next eight weeks. It is also not a full body program. It trains legs and calves and nothing above the waist, so you need your own upper body work on the days between.
Read this before you start. I am not a doctor and this article is not medical advice. Pain that keeps coming back, pain that is still there days later, or any pain that is sharp, catching or stabbing rather than a dull ache, is a reason to go see a qualified professional, not a reason to train through it. Nothing here diagnoses anything and nothing here treats anything. These movements tend to be lower irritation for a lot of people because they limit deep loaded knee bend and hard deceleration and because the load is controlled and easy to dial back, but individual response varies and I cannot promise any exercise is safe for you. If a movement hurts, that movement is not for you today, whatever this article says. Swap it, shorten the range, or skip it.
What You'll Need
- A gym with a leg press, a leg extension, a lying leg curl, a standing calf machine and a seated calf machine. Most of the heavy work in this plan sits on a machine; the only free-weight loading is dumbbell Romanian deadlift work.
- Dumbbells you can move up in small jumps over eight weeks, and a cable tower with an ankle strap and a rope attachment.
- A medium resistance band, plus about six feet of open floor for glute bridges, band walks and the stretch rows.
The Program
Three lower body sessions a week, with at least one day off between them. A common setup is Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Day 1 leans quad, Day 2 leans hamstring and glute, Day 3 works the hips and one leg at a time and trains the calves. Every session is seven rows, opens with its heaviest movement while you are fresh, and closes with a mobility row that you do not load and do not push into pain. Sessions run 45 to 60 minutes including the warm-up. Nothing in here asks you to descend into a deep loaded knee bend, and nothing asks you to absorb impact.
| Day 1 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Quad Focus | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Leg Press | 4 | 10-12, stop the sled where the knee angle stays comfortable | 90 sec |
| Leg Extension | 3 | 12-15 in the top two thirds of the range | 60 sec |
| V Stance Leg Press | 3 | 12-15 | 60 sec |
| Lying Leg Curl | 3 | 10-12, 3 second lower | 60 sec |
| Glute Bridge | 3 | 12-15, dumbbell across the hips | 60 sec |
| Standing Calf Raise | 3 | 12-15 | 45 sec |
| Hip Flexor Stretch | 2 | 30 seconds per side, no load | 30 sec |
| Day 2 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Hamstrings and Glutes | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift | 4 | 8-10, soft knees, hips move not the knees | 90 sec |
| Wide Stance Leg Press | 3 | 10-12 | 90 sec |
| Lying Leg Curl | 3 | 10-12, 3 second lower | 60 sec |
| Cable Pull Through | 3 | 12-15 | 60 sec |
| Seated Calf Raise | 3 | 12-15, 2 second pause at the bottom | 45 sec |
| Glute Kickback (Donkey Kicks) | 3 | 12-15 per leg | 60 sec |
| Standing IT Band Stretch | 2 | 30 seconds per side, no load | 30 sec |
| Day 3 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Hips, Single Leg and Calves | |||
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Rest |
| Narrow Stance Leg Press | 4 | 10-12 | 90 sec |
| Single Leg Romanian Dumbbell Deadlift | 3 | 8-10 per leg | 60 sec |
| Standing Cable Leg Curl | 3 | 12-15 per leg | 45 sec |
| Cable Hip Adduction | 3 | 12-15 per leg | 45 sec |
| Banded Side Step | 3 | 15 steps each direction, tall stance | 45 sec |
| Calf Press | 3 | 15-20 | 45 sec |
| Worlds Greatest Stretch | 2 | 5 slow reps per side, shallow front knee | 30 sec |
How to Progress
Four blocks over eight weeks. Load goes up, rest stays where it is written, and the three mobility rows and the band walk are never progressed.
Weeks 1 and 2. Learn the ranges and find your positions. On every row with a rep range, work at the bottom number of that range and finish each set with two good reps still in you. On the leg press, set the sled depth where the knee angle stays comfortable and mark it with the seat setting so you can repeat it. Do not chase soreness. This block exists so you know what each machine feels like before you load it.
Weeks 3 and 4. Double progression starts. On every row with a rep range, once you hit the top number of that range on all your sets with clean reps, add the smallest available jump next session and drop back to the bottom number. That is 5 to 10 pounds on the leg press and calf work, one dumbbell size on the Romanian deadlift work, one pin on the cables. Range stays where you set it. You are adding weight, not depth.
Weeks 5 and 6. Keep the same double progression and add one set to the first exercise of each day, so the Leg Press on Day 1, the Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift on Day 2 and the Narrow Stance Leg Press on Day 3 each go from 4 sets to 5. Everything else stays as written. That adds about two minutes to each session and keeps you inside the hour.
Weeks 7 and 8. Heaviest two weeks. Same rep ranges, same rest, and you still stop about one rep short of failure on every machine row. This plan is eight weeks long, so there is no deload built into it. Run it out, take three or four easy days at the end, then start it again from week 1 with your week 8 loads or move to something else.
Warm-Up and Recovery Notes
Give the warm-up eight minutes and do not skip it, because the first two sets of the day are where most people find out their knee is unhappy. Five minutes on a bike or a treadmill walk at a pace you can talk through, then a Cat Cow Stretch for ten slow reps, a Hip Flexor Stretch for 30 seconds each side, and a Resistance Band Walk for 15 steps each direction to wake the hips up. Then ramp the first exercise: two light sets on the leg press at half your working weight before your first real set. If something feels off during the ramp, that is information. Take weight off, shorten the range, or move on to the next exercise. Nothing in this program is worth forcing.
Recovery is the boring half. Sleep seven to nine hours, because that is where the tissue you just trained actually rebuilds. Keep at least one full day between leg sessions and use those days for upper body, easy walking, or nothing at all. Walking is usually the best thing you can do on the off days; keep it flat and keep it easy. If a session leaves a knee grumbly for more than a day or two, pull the load back 10 percent on the movement that did it and shorten its range next time. If that does not settle it down, stop guessing and go see a qualified professional.
Nutrition and Supplementation
You are here to build legs, so you need to eat like it. Set protein at roughly 0.8 to 1 gram per pound of bodyweight per day and hit that number every day, not on average. Put calories slightly above maintenance, about 200 to 300 over, if adding size is the goal; if you are carrying extra weight, sit slightly under maintenance instead, because less bodyweight going through the knee on every step is not nothing. Keep carbs around your training so the leg press sets do not fall apart at rep eight. Drink water. None of this is exciting and all of it works.
Food and training do the work here, but a few basics make it easier to hit your numbers: a protein powder to close the daily protein gap when a real meal is not happening, creatine monohydrate at 5 grams a day for the best supported strength and size benefit in the category, and a daily multivitamin to cover the gaps in a normal diet. That is the whole list, and none of it matters if you are not eating and training consistently.
FAQ
Is the leg extension bad for my knees? This is the machine everyone tells you to avoid, and the evidence does not support avoiding it outright for most people. It loads the quad without asking you to balance a bar or absorb a landing, and it is one of the easier movements in the gym to control. What I do ask is that you keep it to the top two thirds of the range, so you are not starting from a deep bent knee position under load, and that you use a weight you can move smoothly instead of swinging. That said, this is a general article and you are one person. If the leg extension bothers your knee, leave it out. Day 1 still works with the other six rows.
Can I put barbell squats back in later? That is a conversation for you and a qualified professional who can actually look at you, not something I can answer from here. What I will say is that this plan is not a stepping stone to a squat and it is not designed as one. It is a way to train legs hard right now with the tools that agree with you. Plenty of people build good legs for years without ever putting a bar on their back.
Three leg days a week and nothing for my upper body? Correct, and that is on purpose. This is a leg plan, not a full program. Run your upper body work on the days in between, keep it to two or three sessions a week, and do not add extra lower body volume on top of these three days. The knees get plenty here.
Questions and results
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Running this program? Tell us what week you are on and how the progression is going. A coach answers every question here.