Love Your Legs!

Why work the legs?  

Legs are the largest muscle groups in the body.  When you work the legs, say, through a squat, you put more stress on the body.  A squat requires work from your legs, yes, but also your lower back, shoulders and core.  Additionally, working your legs through heavy lifting increases the release of growth hormones.  So, actually, working the legs helps build everything else. Don't skip leg day! 

My own personal reasons for loving the legs vary.  I'm a runner so strong legs are essential.  As a woman, legs can be a trouble spot.  Having trim legs means smaller jeans, shorter shorts and slinkier dresses.  Legs are larger muscles, which burn more calories and help me maintain my weight. And last but not least, I'm short!  The leaner my legs are, the longer they appear to be.  It's an illusion, but one I'm happy to promote!   

Here are some of my personal favorite leg exercises:

5. Lunges - Forward, backward or side to side, lunges are excellent for toning glutes and thighs.  Just remember to keep your core tight and your weight in the heel of the forward leg.  There are tons of variations of the lunge, so have fun!

4. Squats! - I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE squats.  I love that you can do them anywhere!  Use a band, dumbbells, straight bar, smith rack, kettle bells... whatever floats your boat.  Always make sure to engage your core and keep the weight through the heels.  Push your hips backward as though you were sitting in a chair.  Squats target the butt and thighs as well as core muscles.  Go a little wider in the squat and hit the inner thighs. 

3. Stairs - Run them, walk them, jump them.  Whatever your pleasure.  Using stairs in your leg routine forces you to engage more muscle fiber than walking on a flat surface.  Plus, if you run them, you get your heart rate up and burn some serious calories.

2. Squat Jumps/Box Jumps - Similar to stairs, you engage a lot of muscle fiber with this exercises.  It's a little different than simply lifting a weight, however.  Typically, you are not lifting anything more than your own body weight, but you are doing it with POWER.  In this exercise, you drop in a squat position and power up, using a burst of movement.  Not only does this help your muscles, but it also helps improve speed, agility, and endurance. 

1. Running/Biking - Of COURSE I love running.  Running does a lot for my legs as well as my heart.  In each stride (or pedal) taken, all of the muscle groups of the leg are engage.  Everything from hip, thighs, calves, glutes and of course, core! 

Work You To The CORE

First, some valuable information!

The core is an important group of muscles around your mid-section.  Everyone focuses on the six pack, but when you work your core, you really should focus on abdominals, obliques AND lower back.  All of those areas make up your core.

It's important to have a strong core.  Every movement you do begins with the core.  The stronger it is, the better you move, and the less likely you are to get injured.

You don't need to work the core everyday.  This is something I failed to realize, at first.  I always believed you could work the core every day, but actually, you don't need to!  2 - 3 days a week is perfectly sufficient. Physiologically, the core muscles are like any other muscle in your body.  The core muscles need recovery time, as well.

So my favorite way to work the core is to do a "Core Burnout"

I do several exercises back to back either for 10 reps or 1 minute.  The idea is to do this without stopping, merely pausing to prepare for the next exercise.  Here is an example:

10 Crunches
10 Reverse Crunches
10 Toe Touches
10 Leg Drops
1 minute Scissor Kicks
10 Russian Twists
10 V Ups Right Side
10 V Ups Left Side
10 Reptiles
1 minute Plank

This can always be modified.  Planks can be done on the knees instead of the toes or you can decrease the 1 minute time increment to 30 seconds.

Have fun!