Benefits of gym leg days

‍Despite the recent trend of building a bigger booty, training your legs are essential for a number of reasons: 

1. Functional Strength: Strong legs improve your functional strength, i.e., the strength that you use in everyday activities. From walking up stairs, running for a bus, to lifting heavy items, your legs play a vital role in your daily life.
2. Calorie Burning: Leg workouts engage some of the largest muscle groups in your body, which can burn a significant number of calories during and after your workout, helping with weight management.
3. Increased Metabolism: Because leg exercises stimulate some of the largest muscles in your body, they can potentially boost your metabolic rate, helping you burn more calories even when you're resting.
4. Prevention of Injuries: Strong leg muscles can help prevent injuries by providing better support for your body, improving balance and coordination, and enhancing overall mobility.
5. Improved Athletic Performance: If you play sports or engage in athletic activities, strong legs and lower body strength are vital for performance, speed, and agility.
6. Enhanced Workout Efficiency: Many leg exercises are compound movements, meaning they work multiple muscle groups at once, making your workouts more efficient.

Now that you know the benefits, let’s help you make the most out of your workouts

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1. Use Exercises That Work Many Muscles at Once

Compound exercises that use many muscles at once, like squats, lunges, and deadlifts, are super effective as they build strength, muscle and power and also help with movements you do in daily life. For example squatting replicates standing up and sitting down. The more you squat, the easier you’ll move through life and achieve everyday tasks. Trust us, it might not be something you think of now, but as you’ll get older you’ll thank us!

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2. Always Warm Up

Warm-ups are key for making the most out of your leg workouts. They get your body ready for action, helping you to perform better, prevent injury and improve your range of motion. An effective warm-up will last around 5-10 minutes. Start by some light cardio to promote blood flow to your muscles, followed by some dynamic stretches and targeted lower body mobility, finishing off with some bodyweight movements replicating the exercises you have in your workout.

3. Utilise progressive overload 

Progressive overload simply means doing more over time.Our bodies are super smart; they adapt quickly to the training that we do, so in order for your body to continually grow and progress, you need to be working that little bit harder each time you train and challenging it in different ways. You can progressively overload your workouts in the following different ways to help you either stimulate muscle growth, strength, endurance, break through a plateau or a combination of the above. Here are the most common ways to overload your workouts:

Load | Lifting more weight
Intensity |  Making the workout more intense through harder exercises or TUT (time under tension)
Volume | Increasing the sets and reps of an exercise
Frequency | How often you train 

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5. Form Comes First 

Progressive overload is important, but form always comes first. It doesn’t matter how much you’re lifting, if you’re not lifting correctly you may as well not be lifting at all. Practice makes permanent and when we don’t focus on form we run the risk of injury as well as well as learning bad habits

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‍6. Rest and Recover

Resting is just as important as working out, yes really. It’s when we sleep and are on our rest days that our bodies recover, repair and get stronger. So make sure you’re taking your rest days and giving yourself time to heal, so that you can rebuild, repair and come back stronger!

The Bottom Line 

Leg workouts are essential, regardless of whether you're an athlete, newbie or just someone who wants to stay fit. By understanding the importance of progressive overload, allowing adequate rest and recovery and utilising proper form, you can be sure to make the most of your gym leg workouts as well as your results. Remember, consistency is key, and progression is a process. Always listen to your body and adjust your routine accordingly. With time, patience, and consistency, you’ll see improvements in not only your workouts, but your overall health and happiness too. If you’re looking for a leg focused program, why not try Krissy Cela’s Strong: Lower Body to unleash your potential as you build strength and confidence from the inside out.