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Bodybuilding for Legs

We’ve all seen them – the big, top-heavy weight lifters strutting around with their muscular upper body and stork legs. The primary key to looking good is proportion. No matter how big your guns are, you won’t look good if they’re being carried around by a pair of toothpicks!

Legs are probably the most undertrained of all the body parts, especially for new lifters. A proper leg training routine will not only add muscle to your legs, it will stimulate your entire system and help you make muscle gains all over. You’ll have a pleasurable balance to your physique and can stop wearing sweatpants to the gym!

To fully develop the legs, you need to stimulate and fatigue the muscles as much as possible. In order to do that, you need to train with intensity and volume. Think of intensity as how much weight you do for a rep and volume as how much you move over your entire workout. Like most other muscle building exercises, you want to aim for 5-8 reps.

A great workout methodology is to use a combination of low rep and high rep exercises. This mixed approach to training can help maximize both your strength and size gains.

When it comes to training legs (or anything else for that matter) here are three important principles to keep in mind.

1. Legs can be particularly tough to train because they are such large muscles. More than any other muscle group, it takes a lot of will power to work up to your maximal effort while training legs. Starting out, you might even get to the point where you feel as though you’re going to vomit. Harden your will, set your goals, and don’t’ slack off!

2. Working out is only half the battle. The other half comes into play when you aren’t in the gym. Do you lead a healthy lifestyle? Does your nutrition support your goals? It doesn’t do any good to blast your legs and then go out and pound quarter-pounders from McDonalds. It’s especially important that after your workout you take in some high quality protein and slow carbohydrates.

3. Resting is just as important as working out. If you don’t give your body time to heal, you won’t see any progress. Make sure you get enough sleep every night and that you take plenty of recovery time between workouts. If you’re under 40, you can probably blast your legs 3 times a week; over better scale it back to two.

A good set of powerful, muscular legs not only looks good, it adds to your total strength. If you haven’t been hitting legs as much as you should (or at all), it’s about time you got started!

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