The Beauty of a Leg Day

 Legs, Legs, Legs! If you’re coming to a plateau in your workouts it’s time to make some changes. Add a leg day – a 30-60 minute workout series that focuses solely on your lower region. Why? Your legs have the largest muscles in your body and we use them every day. On top of the basic and beautiful benefits from daily exercise such as increased happiness, increased sex-drive, increased range of motion & flexibility and of course increased confidence I have summarized 3 of my favourite benefits that I have personally experienced and witnessed within my clients once implementing a leg day into their weekly routine.

1. Lose weight faster - Burn more calories while you’re just chilling: Having more muscle in your body allows your metabolism to burn a higher % of calories while at rest. To get scientific with you, which I prefer not to do, so I`ll keep it short: 1lb of fat burns 2 calories per day vs. 1lb of muscle burns 6 calories per day. That`s more than double!! So if your legs contain the largest muscles in your body, wouldn’t you want them to be pure muscle? I mean besides the obvious reasons that they wouldn’t jiggle when you run, you would reduce and prevent cellulite and you would have an ass that you could bounce quarters off of. Why not have nice muscular legs and buns?  
   
   
2. Keep your body healthy - Lower risk of back pain & injury: For many of us we have sedentary jobs where we are sitting for about 80% of our work day. Now I am assuming no one is warming up or stretching your hip flexors before or after you take a seat at that desk, so your hip flexors are going to naturally become shortened and tight over-time, while your hamstrings become weak. This causes body imbalance and will pull your hips into an anterior pelvic tilt causing strain to your lower back. If you bring in a leg training day you will build muscle in your hamstrings (while deadlifting) and strengthen your hip flexors (while squatting) while lengthening (through lunging).  While these 3 exercises I have mentioned will strengthen your legs they will also aid in injury prevention through training your knees to stabilize when performing them correctly.
   
   
3. Become Superman or Superwoman - Increase in daily mobility: We use our legs in our daily living. As we grow older our bones start to deteriorate and what else do we have to hold up our bodies? Our muscles duh!!! The sooner you start weight training the more your body and daily functions will benefit. Simple things like going up the stairs, running across the street while jay-walking, getting out of bed, getting on and off the floor (don`t need to know why you’re on the floor), kicking your boyfriend (wouldn`t mind knowing that), and I think you get the point. The stronger your legs are, the easier these tasks will become and the more your bones will be supported. When I impl weekly routine of a regular client of mine, she was so impressed at how much faster she could run and do the grouse grind. She said `` I always thought that I needed to increase my cardio endurance to get better times``. Although cardio plays an important role, the stronger your leg muscles the less your heart (cardio) needs to work.