Who doesn’t want a perfect body with a flat stomach and toned muscles? However, achieving that ideal body shape is not a walk in the park. You have to follow a rigorous workout routine spiritually every day to get into that perfect shape.
People tend to keep pace with those workouts that are easy to do and often skip the toughest ones like the leg exercises. This is the reason you must have noticed many persons with a fit upper body but chicken legs. This does not give an appealing look to the eyes, and you may lose a chance to go on a date with your crush.
Though leg days are the most physically demanding workout days, never skip leg day if you don’t want to end up with paper-thin and feeble legs. It will help you to achieve your fitness goals. Keep reading to know all about the leg day and why you should never skip one.
What Is A Leg Day?
If you guys are new to fitness and working out, you must be wondering what this leg day is? So let us start from the basics and get you informed about the leg day.
Once you start hitting the gym, you will have an appropriate weekly workout routine consisting of every day workout plan. One day out of all the days is entirely dedicated to leg exercises to tone your lower body. This day is known as leg day in the language of athletes and fitness freaks.
Since leg day is the most challenging day out of all other daily fitness plans in a week, most people skip it and afterward regret. It includes exercises like squats, leg press, and calf raises, which enhances and strengthen your legs muscles in your body.
You must make sure to select the strength training as per your body’s requirements. Otherwise, either you will end up doing workouts not enough for your legs, or you will be too exhausted by the excess exercises not needed by your body.
Why Should You Never Skip Leg Day?
For a lot of people, leg day training in a week is the most haunting day of their workout routine. Upper body workouts like bench press or pull up are more comfortable than the lower body workouts for them. The squats and lunges terrify many due to the challenging poses and the excessive load on their lower body. This is the reason why most people skip the leg day at their gym.
Many people also think that building the upper body is enough, and they are not bothered about their legs and lower body parts. Skipping leg day can also be psychological as many men think toned chest and arms are more noticeable and tempting than their covered quads and hamstrings.
However, do you know that skipping leg day can give you short term relief, but it will definitely damage your overall body shape in the long run? It can also push you towards an injured and diseased life. Furthermore, toned and long legs can enhance any person’s overall bodily loveliness, be it a man or a woman.
Till now, you must have understood what leg day is, but you must be wondering is it worth your time and efforts. Yes, leg day is undoubtedly worth all the pain. You should never skip leg day at any cost unless you are exhausted or are suffering from some illness like flu or cold.
Let us look at a few pointers that answer your question about why you should not skip leg day.
· Strong legs that complement your fit and toned upper body are more attractive than weak legs. Do you want to be called chicken legs among many people? Obviously not, so make sure you don’t skip your leg day training.
· If you think to build muscles in your body, only workouts for your upper body is necessary. You’re mistaken. The compound efforts of your muscle groups comprising of your top and lower body will help you to build body muscles.
· Sweating excessively helps you lose weight and leg day training are known for their challenging poses that make you sweat. Thus, these workouts also aim to burn fat and help you lose weight.
· Whether you like playing soccer, basketball, or football, you need to have robust legs for any sport. For this, the best way to enhance your athletic performance is not skipping your leg day training even for a week.
· Apart from all these advantages, leg day also protects you from an injury like joint pain and diseases like obesity. It also manages your stress and anxiety.
Benefits Of Leg Day
Now, you know that skipping leg day training is not at all a good idea. It can lead to many health concerns, and you will be deprived of hundreds of benefits that it has to offer.
Let us discuss a few benefits of leg day to make you aware of its importance in day to day life.
1.Burn Extra Calories
We all know that excess calories in our body not only makes us look fat but also increases the risk of various health concerns. Excessive calories in your body can expose you to a variety of heart diseases and lung diseases. Therefore, it is always a good idea to burn fat and calories in order to stay fit and healthy.
Your lower body is the largest muscles groups of your body. So if you get involved in leg day, it will enable you to burn unnecessary calories from most of your muscles in your body. Also, since lower body exercises are really difficult to handle, doing it will increase your metabolism. Nothing works better than enhanced metabolism to burn your calories.
2.Revitalizes Hormones
Hormones play the most significant role in our body. They manage the most complex and crucial processes like growth, fertility, brain development, metabolism, and more. Thus, it is essential for your body’s proper functioning to maintain the right amount of hormones.
Leg working as a squat allows your body to revitalize and stimulate the flow of hormones. Leg day can release testosterone, cortisol, endorphins, and more such hormones for your growth and fitness.
The stimulated hormones help you boost your immune system, repair damaged cells, and enrich fat metabolism. It aids you in protecting your body from several diseases and helps your body to enhance its performance. So make sure you train your legs.
3.Improve Body Posture
A perfect posture enhances the overall beauty of your body and makes you look even more appealing. It also improves your spine health and keeps your blood vessels and nerves healthy.
Leg workouts optimize the functioning of your spinal cord by providing the support that it needs. These exercises, like deadlifts and ball bridge, strengthen the vertebrae, and make sure it is stiff and uplifted for an ideal shape of the back.
4.Diminishes Exposure To Injury
It is possible that if you are not used to leg movements, you can easily injure yourself while playing sports or doing some heavy-duty work. You can even get exposed to severe injuries like an ACL tear.
Leg days makes you ready for such days by strengthening your lower body. Regular leg exercises train your lower half to deal with the excessive workload on your legs. Thus, you will not fall into the trap of joint pains or several other injuries.
5.Enhances Overall Attractiveness
It is a fact that legs that are longer than average legs allure the opposite sex more than standard length legs. Whether you are a man or a woman, long and fit legs are preferred by everyone.
Leg workouts make your limbs toned and fit, which in turn gives a long and slim texture to your legs. This helps you to enhance your overall physical attractiveness, and people get appealed to your legs. Also, it gives a balanced and symmetrical look to your body, which saves you from getting called chicken legs.
6.Avoid Lower Back Pain
The lifestyle we are living in is the root cause of many health issues and diseases. Continuously sitting on your work table and fewer physical movements lead to concerns like lower back pain. This can be very painful and dangerous in the long run.
Though we cannot escape from this lifestyle, we can get used to leg day and leg workouts to avoid getting attacked by back pain. Leg day increases the strength of your leg muscles, back, abs, and hips, which diminishes the risk of back pain.
7.Elevates Mood
Have you fought with your partner? Or have your boss nagged on you without any reason? Go for the leg workout. A leg day helps your brain to release a hormone named endorphins. It is known to rejuvenate your mood.
It leaves a positive impact on your senses and energy levels. Thus, leg working like a squat can definitely enhance and elevate your mood.
8.Beneficial For Other Exercises And Sports
Strong legs take you to your fullest potential in sports like football or rugby. It even helps you to give a better performance in other workouts like cardio.
Leg day enables you to train your lower body, and it also aids you enhance the power of your leg muscles. Therefore, it can prove to be beneficial for other exercises and sports.
The Best 5 Leg Workout For Men And Women
Whether you guys follow your workout routine at your home gym or a commercial gym, you should definitely include leg workouts in your workout plans. There are a few basic and crucial leg workouts for men and women that you should definitely incorporate into the routine.
Here are the 5 basic and best leg workouts for everyone that you can even do at your home without any machine or tools.
1. Squats
If squats are done with appropriate techniques, they can be the best leg workout as they hit each muscle of your lower body part. It can enhance the shape of your quads, glutes, calves, hamstrings, and hips muscles. You can do squat either with a barbell or without it. For beginners, we suggest going for a squat without a barbell.
How To Do Squat?
· First, stand straight and then bend your knees.
· Lower your body, imagining you are sitting on a chair.
· Ensure you are in a position that your back is straight and your thighs are parallel to the ground.
· Stretch your hands forward. Stand up and go back to get the sitting position again.
· Repeat this process.
2. Step-Ups
This is a simple leg workout where you pretend like you are climbing stairs. It works on the body muscles of the legs and buttocks. It targets your quadriceps, hamstrings, and gluteal muscles.
This is a low injury workout. Hence it is the best option for beginners. You should really include this straightforward yet effective leg workout in your leg day routine.
How To Do Step-Ups?
· Keep a box or bench in front of you. Step up on the platform with your right foot.
· Lift your body while your right leg is on the platform. Now, place your left leg next to your right leg.
· Step down with your right foot and then pull yourself again while the left leg is on the box. Repeat this process either with dumbbells in your hand or not.
3. Calf Raise
People say that leg workouts are tough, but when it comes to calf raise, not even any upper body workout can be as easy as this leg workout.
Primarily it works for your calf muscles, but it also enhances gastrocnemius and the soleus that are muscles attached to the heel. It improves your ankle stability and the power to balance.
How To Do Calf Raise?
· Stand straight on a flat surface.
· Gradually, stand up on your toes and lift your heels off the floor.
· Stop in the position for a moment, then slowly return to the floor.
4. Lunges
Though there are various lunges that you can do, we are talking about the standard lunges. This is easy and beneficial, even for beginners. It works on your lower body’s significant muscles: thighs, hips, and glutes. It even build muscle of the quadriceps. As you move towards intermediate, you can try walking lunges or side lunges.
How To Do Lunges?
· Stand on a flat surface with right foot forward and left foot at your back.
· Bend in the same position that your right knee is in front of you and your back knee is parallel to the floor.
· Go back to the standing position and repeat this process.
FAQs
1.What Happens If You Skip Leg Day?
If you skip one leg day, it’s not a big deal. However, the problem begins when you start skipping leg day every week. At first, there will be no noticeable change in your body, but your lower body muscle groups will gradually deteriorate.
Your legs will not be able to build muscle, and they will look thin and weak. Therefore, make sure you never skip leg day.
2.Can you skip leg day?
Yes, obviously, missing a day or two from your leg routine will not have any significant damage to your fitness goal. However, make sure you do not skip your leg workouts for several days. Otherwise, your build muscle tone and performance will decline. It is best if you are constant in your training and fitness goals.
3.Is leg day really necessary?
If you don’t want to be called chicken legs, then leg day is absolutely necessary. If you wish to have toned and slim legs with curvy hips, make sure you do not skip your leg day. Leg day training also helps our motion, and it reduces the risk of injury.
Apart from this, as we know, it is the best hormone stimulator, and it also elevates our mood. So it is necessary to include leg day in your workout routine like upper body workouts.
4.Why is leg day so bad?
Intense leg day workout can make it difficult for people even to walk, sit, or climb. Sometimes the pain is unbearable, but this happens only when you are a beginner. Once people are used to leg day, they will not feel any cramps.
Generally, leg days are hard because approx. 50% or more of your body muscles are located in your lower body part, and when most of the muscles are in motion or exhausted, it becomes hard to manage.
What makes it even worse is that new leg day rolls in again when your legs finally started feeling a bit better.
End Notes
Strength training and working your legs can be challenging, but that does not give any reason to skip leg day. If you are serious about your fitness goal and want to make your whole body healthy, strong, and perfect, there is no option for you to skip a leg day. Apart from this, make sure you pay heed to both working your legs and upper body strength training to get the ideal body shape.
A professional trainer is a must for your fitness aims if you are a beginner not to end up hurting or causing an injury to yourself while doing upper or lower body training. So make sure to consult one before beginning with your leg day.
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