It’s often the most difficult training session of the week. Your quads, glutes, and hamstrings are amongst the largest muscles in your body, which requires them to use significant amounts of energy during a training session. This makes working them out extremely hard, but if you want a great booty bad enough you will push outside of your comfort zone using my 5 best ways to build your leg muscles.
You should train your lower body two times per week on average giving yourself enough time to recover between sessions. As long as you are eating well and sleeping enough this should be plenty of recovery. I usually train legs on Monday and Thursday so I can utilize the 72 hours between to rest and refresh. My clients usually know because I’ll hobble into Headquarters and get a few “you trained legs yesterday, didn’t you?” comments! I practice what I preach, and this is my best advice on how to make those leg gains!
My 5 Best Ways to Build Your Leg Muscles
1. Squat and Get Low Doing It – If you have ever been to a Crossfit workout, they teach you to get your “a** to the grass”…slow down there killers, range of motion is important but I also enjoy having my knees fully intact. You don’t need to “drop it like it’s hot” and blow out a MCL, but you do need to get low! Depending on your ability level you can perform body weight squats, jump squats, or weighted squats. As you can see in these pictures below, all three versions I am taking squatting until my quads are parallel with the ground.
You should always maintain a slight posterior pelvic tilt thus making the “a** to the grass” philosophy nearly impossible. This will allow you to elongate your hamstring muscles and use them wisely. Below is a picture of me showing you what to do, and what not to do! Every single leg day should consist of some type of squatting!
2. Reach Failure on Every Set – Have you ever heard of the word “hypertrophy”? This is a targeted style of resistance training that allows your body to gain maximum lean muscle tissue based of the intensity and rep count that you keep. Too many reps will burn muscle and too few reps will get you bulky. If you want to be lean and strong, you want to reach hypertrophy (or muscle failure) with every set between 8-15 reps. This is one of the very few times when failure is a good thing! You need to squat until your little legs give out from underneath you! This is the only way to build up your legs.
I love my clients to death. But sometimes they will see if they can get away with using lighter weights because it is “easier”. No, no my friends! You better lift that heavy weight. If you want results, you have to put in the work. Slackin’ on the weight will leave you lackin’ on the legs!
3. Plyometrics For Powerful Legs – Sick of jiggles and wiggles? Then plyometric training will not only firm up your legs real quick, but it will jack that heart rate up, too! Any exercise that builds muscle and spikes your heart rate up like plyo’s can definitely be found at Burn Boot Camp. The difficulty of plyometrics is a solid 10/10, but if it doesn’t challenge you it doesn’t change you!
I have created this quick 20 minute Plyometric Workout on my Burn TV Youtube Channel for you to get a taste of what plyos are all about. Your legs will feel like solid rocks after this workout, and I mean that in the most awesome way possible! Subscribe to Burn TV and get this kind of stuff weekly!
4. Strength/Plyo Supersets – A “superset” is when you combine two exercises in a row without stopping. A “strength/plyo” superset is when you perform a weighted exercise followed immediately by a power exercise. This is the single best route to lean, strong, and toned legs without a doubt. Follow me along as I show you a strength/plyo superset workout that you can do at home or on vacation! (We do these at Burn all of the time)
5. Run The Bleachers (or Stairs) – Talk about a killer way to burn calories and build muscle! Some of us often make a critical mistake when running bleachers or stairs. I am telling you right now, if you want a GREAT booty, take this piece of advice seriously. Do not simply “jog” up the stairs. I want you to gear up, stare at the top of those stairs, and explode up them as fast as you can. If you can run up and skip 2 or 3 steps at a time, do it! Push off with each step and get from point “a” to point “b” as quickly as possible and you will build your leg muscles as quickly as possible!
Remember, that no fitness training works without first getting your diet right! You cannot out train your diet, so do not try! You can check out Morgan’s Meal Prep video if you find yourself running around town without anything to eat. You can download our FREE Burn Boot Camp Nutrition Pack to get you right! Please, please let me know if you need anything, I wake up each morning LOVING what I do and want to help you be the best you can be for you and your family.
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