"Thigh" vs. "Quad"?

[Scott Stevenson]

I'm still rereading a lot of "Fortitude Training" so I apologize if this is somewhere in the book and I missed it. Scott does a good job of packing in a lot of information in a short amount of pages!

What is the difference between a "thigh" exercise and a "quad" exercise? I see the training logs making this distinction but, in my mind, the two have always been the same. Does "thigh" just refer to isolation exercises and "quad" compound exercises?

Ryan,

You've got it kind of flip flopped.

"Thigh" refers to the muscles of the thigh: Quad, hams, adductors, etc. that are activated during compound movements (leg presses, squats, etc.)

"Quads" refer to the quads (m. quadriceps femoris) which extends the knee primarily. (The rectus femoris flexes at the hip, too.)

Isolation exercises for the thigh would be exercises that isolate particular muscles of the thigh. E.g., knee extensions isolate the quads, which are muscles of the thigh. A hamstring curl trains the hamstrings (and is a thigh isolation exercise that isolates / focuses on the hamstrings).



-S