Legs are probably the most neglected muscle groups when it comes to bodybuilders and people that train on daily bases. We can only guess why is that the case.
One of the reasons could be that legs are less visible than other muscle groups. It is very easy to hide underdeveloped legs. Luckily, you will very rarely see a woman that neglects legs when it comes to workouts. It is very nice seeing perfectly developed quads, calves and especially glutes.
In this article we will explain to you why it is important doing leg workouts and what are the best leg exercises that will help you tone your legs in no time.
Why Should You Do Leg Exercises?
There are many excuses people (mostly men) give you when you ask them about leg exercises like “My legs are working all day long and anyway no one can see them”, or “Leg workout is so hard and painful my quads start burning the moment I start doing the set”, or “My legs are shaking for hours after I finish my workout”.
List is endless and reasons you will hear are many, but are leg muscles really that important? Of course they are, and we will give you some facts to explain to you why it is so.
The biggest muscles in the human body are located on the top end of legs. Also remember legs are the support for the entire body, so the entire posture depends on the strength of the legs.
Growth of the entire body is diminished for 25% if you are not working on the leg muscles since exercises for this part of your body stimulate the other muscle groups to grow.
On the other hand, leg training can be extremely difficult. Proper leg workout requires a high degree of aerobic activities. Of course, such a workout demands good recovery, and that is the reason that people do legs only once a week.
What we need to tell you is that if you have a genetic predisposition, there is a danger that you increase the volume of your legs so much that they can end up looking totally disproportional with the rest of the body so you have to be very careful.
You should avoid disproportion and loss of flexibility at any cost. We will give you the tips on how to get nicely shaped and proportional legs that will be in perfect ballans with the rest of your body.
With Training to Perfect Legs
Numerous muscles on our thighs can be divided into four groups and those are lower leg extensors, lower leg flexors, abductors and adductors. If we look at it anatomically, we will realize that almost half of our muscle mass is on our thighs.
That is the main reason why our body sees leg workout as a big strain for the entire body and it produces a significant amount of growth hormone to deal with the stress and that is exactly what we need – free growth hormone.
Best Leg Exercises
Now that we determined that you should do leg exercises and that they are good for you, let us see what are the best leg exercises that will help you build up the muscles.
Many experts claim that squats are irreplaceable and that they are definitely the best exercises for increasing the volume of the thighs. Tha is probably true, but not everyone can do squats.
Many people just end up hurting their knees or getting lower back pain while doing squats. For shorter people though, with shorter upper body squats can be a fantastic exercise.
However, if you can not do squats, leg press or lunges will be an adequate replacement. You can use leg extension as an additional exercise that will improve the shape and separation of legs. When it comes to the hamstrings, pull with straight knees is a good exercise and you can add to it leg flexion.
You will do hamstrings first in your workout, which is a bit out of the ordinary. After you finished warming up, properly stretch the hamstrings.
Pull with straight knees will be your basic exercise but will not be your first exercise. First exercise should be leg flex. You should do one set of eight to twelve reps. Straight after that you will do the pull with straight knees with a bar or dumbbells.
During this exercise legs shouldn’t be completely straight but slightly bent. Try to do the exercise with full movement radius without bending your back.
Number of reps should be between eight and twelve. After that, go back to leg flex with one more set of eight to twelve reps. You end your workout for hamstrings with another stretching.
After you finished hamstrings, you are doing the stretching for the rest of the leg muscles. This workout will be a bit more difficult and it can easily happen that after a few first workouts you have a slight inflammation.
Start with leg press. After you have done your warmup chose the weight you can lift eight to twelve times. Straight after this exercise go to leg extension.
For this exercise you should do twenty reps and they should go like this: Positive phase of the movement you are doing with both legs. You are holding this position for a few seconds and then the negative phase of the movement you are doing with only one leg.
When you finish your set, you finished your workout. Make sure you stretch.
Even though these types of trainings are short in duration, they will give you amazing results. If you are just starting the training for your legs for the first time, you will see the results very quickly.
If you are exercising for a longer time period, you will still enjoy the change. You should do this exercise program for about four to six weeks and then have a two week break doing conventional exercises.
