Hopefully I'm not the only one with a pretty big disparity.

12 hard sets of my upper body, and after a breather my brain might say something like "Okay, lets do some high rep dips or something to finish off, that felt good"

12 hard sets of deadlifting, squatting, and/or whatever compound accessories might go with it and my brain doesn't want to do calf raises or anything, I get a breather and it says "Okay, lets do our best to make it back up the stairs without having to crawl"

You would think with being up and walking around and bending over all day the legs and glutes would be better equipped for more work, especially being bigger muscles, but it apparently isn't the case with me.

Which half is your better worker?

Deadlifts and Squats tax me way more than the bench press, overhead press, or bent over rows.  Although, when I start doing what I deem heavy shoulders, like hitting 165+ on the strict standing overhead press, abs are out of the question too.  I cramped up so bad doing abs after heavy OHP, I never did abs after shoulders again.

I have a much, much greater upper body vs lower body disparity than you. But, mine is the result of a neurological disorder, so probably doesn't count.

Well hell yeah, bench press is laying down to work out.  

The weights are heavier, you're using larger and more muscle groups, of course volume will have more effect.  Take a full body movement and add in a speed element if you really want to know what trashed feels like.

That said, you will eventually adapt (to a degree).  Like in gunz's case.  Start with 1 set of abs after your OHP, then add a set every week.  You'll adapt.

Your probably moving a lot more weight for a larger range of motion when you work legs.


There are two options.

1. Don't squat or deadlift. Do calves then Leg press or hack squat then finish with leg extension and reverse leg curl supersets.
2. Do that and squat/deadlift lighter weight at the end of your workout. The weight will have to be lighter and it'll be a more volume based approach.



From my experience if you squat and deadlift early on you typically go really heavy and get too fatigued to get a lot of quality volume in.

Every muscle group has a different recoverable volume. The larger the muscle, the longer it takes to recover from a hard effort because you can stress it with heavier loads. Upper body has smaller muscles, thus it can tolerate more volume.

You burn up all the fo juice on lower body.

I do the exact same.  

I now do calf work at odd times separate from my normal workout.  Usually in the morning before work.  But I am riding a bike so much at work now I've backed off quite a bit from calves all together.

The lower body muscles are bigger muscles, so maybe the overall stress load is much higher because you're not only hitting the prime movers, but also more work on stabilizing muscles.

I'll also offer the thought that, even though quads/glues/hams are the strongest muscles in the body, they tend to be called on to do more endurance work so they have a higher percentage of Type I and Type IIa fibers and are better adapted to endurance work.  High force productions taxes them more because they are not as well adapted to produce high forces as they are to go long.

If I could walk around using my arms in a handstand, I'm sure a couple hundred yards of distance covered would just about kill me.  Upper body is more adapted to do strength work in most people, aside from swimmers, kayakers, etc.

This is the answer.