The other day I was mindlessly watching tv when a movie trailer came through (I can’t even remember what it was) and it shows the lead actor doing sit ups as their physical training. For some reason this made a connection to me and I realized that in almost every movie I’ve ever watched where there was an element of training and conditioning, the antagonist would invariably do sit ups or crunches. They rarely ever did squats, deadlifts, or even heavy farmer carries.

There’s obviously some rare exceptions: Bradley Cooper’s role in American Sniper where he was deadlifting 4 hundred and change. Rocky 4 where Drago was throwing around a barbell while Rocky lifted rocks and ran up mountains, plus did dragon flags like a beast.

And finally, apparently in the new Batman V Superman, Ben Affleck does some squats and then tosses the 12,000 lb bar (natty) at the end of the set, because if anyone can drop weights in their gym is Bruce Goddamn Wayne. However, this might be the first time Bruce Wayne even lifts during a movie. Previous iterations (like Christian Bale) subsists with a steady diet of crunches (even after having his back broken and a protruding vertebrae, combined with a jailhouse chiropractic adjustment), pushups and chin ups. Not a single squat for that arthritic knee that needed a biomechanical robotic brace on it.

Rocky, the greatest training montage franchise in history, still only really involves some kind of leg training that isn’t running up a hill or duck walking with a log only in the 6th edition, and at that point he also too arthritic to run, but still finds a way to constantly run.

We won’t talk about those kettlebell snatches though. The funny thing is, no one ever disputes Rocky 4 as the greatest training montage of all time, especially since by running time the entire movie is actually 31.9% montage. Seriously, if you want to have an awesome movie, make it primarily montage and you’ll be successful.

Even Team America World Police only involves shooting a gun, spinning in a gyroscope, and curling a barbell.

To be fair, most movies that involve some type of training montage or showcase of training comes down to either boxing or superhero movies. There’s still a lot of movies that show training montages where boxing and superheros aren’t present, though. Take Wet Hot American Summer for instance:

Running through a field and dancing in a shed. No leg days at all.

Blades of Glory just showed figure skating and Chaz Michael Michaels walking on a treadmill while singing Kanye West.

There’s no doubt that many of the training scenes involving running or complicated footwork patterns, hill climbing or other things tend to use the legs sufficiently, but what is it about montages that seem to only feature things like crunches, pushups, the occasional pull up and running as the main ways to get into good shape?

Did you see Cool Runnings hit a leg press?? When was the last time you saw a movie that used a leg press? Oh yeah, Cool Runnings.

Patrick Swayze spent almost all of the quintessential dude movie Roadhouse either kicking ass or doing tai chi without a shirt on.

Even Jean-Claude van Damme spends most of his training time in almost every movie just doing the splits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHZspao8mcw

Compare this to Terry Crews, his co-star in The Expendables, and you can see a big difference in their methodology and approach.

While splits are cool and all, I’m guessing comparing splits on a door jam to crawling through a laser field while listening to some euro-techno music like Francois Toulour would probably get a little more kick up form the quads. Plus it’s way more functional.

It’s not all pushups and crunches, though. Mr. Incredible knew what was up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80XRvNNAYKI

So why is it that movies rarely show bros and brahs training their legs? Maybe they’re just not as sexy as training pushups or some form of ab work. Maybe directors and producers don’t think about functional carryover to other crime fighting or street fighting methods. This could be why you rarely ever see magazines with cover models showing them wearing shorts of any kind as well. Legs are just the workhorse of the body, but upper body muscle is like the crown jewels of a physique.

That being said, legs can be beautiful too. Just look at Instagram: nothing but pics of people’s butts and thighs. And cats. And memes. Of cats and thighs. This shows that you can hit up a movie training montage while also involving some lower body exercises once in a while.

Next time you’re thinking of skipping out on training legs, just think of how much better you can be than all of Hollywood and how much more functional you can be simply by dropping it like it’s hot, picking heavy stuff up off the floor, and hip thrusting your face off. Let’s Make Legs Great Again, and be the change we want to see in the world of film.

Time to go squat.