On an average day at your local gym, if you take a look around you will notice that the majority of lifters are working their upper bodies, and not doing leg workouts. The fact is, most people focus on building up their upper bodies whilst neglecting their lower half.
The main reason for this is that your leg muscles aren’t really “showy” and everyone would rather work on having a large chest, arms, and shoulders that everyone can notice. Come on, let’s be honest here, have you ever heard a girl ask a guy to flex his quads? Didn’t think so. Upper bodies always get the attention.
Sure, working your arms, shoulders, chest, back and so on is great. But while everyone is training their upper bodies hard, leg workouts are neglected, skipped, or are even non-existent in some lifter’s routines.
People come up with all sorts of reasons as to why they don’t train their legs properly. Excuses such as “squats are bad for my knees” or “I work my legs by running, cycling etc” are just that, excuses.
The mistake of avoiding hard leg training is costly, and there are two main reasons as to why. If you have a large and muscular upper body, and under-developed legs, you would look quite ridiculous. Think about it, huge pecs, bulging arms, cannonball shoulders, and a wide muscular back, sitting on top of toothpick legs. Now that’s funny-looking in anyone’s book.
The second reason to train your legs as hard as all your other muscles is even more important, yet less commonly known amongst lifters. Including hard and heavy leg workouts in your weight lifting routine will increase the size and strength of muscles all over your body. Yes that’s right, avoiding your legs will limit the amount of muscle you can build in your chest, back, shoulders and arms.
Don’t believe me? I’ll explain the truth to you.
Your muscles don’t just grow from specific exercises you do for a particular muscle. For example, your biceps don’t grow JUST from doing bicep related exercises such as bicep curls.
Your body builds muscle on another level too. When many different muscle groups are worked simultaneously, putting the majority of your body under intense stress, muscle growth occurs all over the body. Sort of like a spillover effect if you know what I mean.
How does your body do this? Because with this intense stress comes increased secretion of important muscle-building hormones such as testosterone and growth hormone. These hormones play a big part in determining how much muscle mass someone can physically gain.
And one of the best ways to increase the production of these hormones in your body is doing hard and heavy leg workouts week in and week out!
The particular leg exercises I’m talking about are of course Squats, which is perhaps the most important muscle-building exercise out of all, the leg press, lunges, deadlifts, and calf raises.
Have you noticed how stressful these leg exercises seem to be when done heavy? That’s because your legs contain the largest muscle groups on your entire body and allow you to train with very heavy weights.
The good thing about a killer leg workout is your body will produce more critical anabolic muscle-building hormones than usual, which means greater size and strength all over your body. Yes, working your legs affects your arms, chest, shoulders, and back muscles.
So if you don’t already do so, include a great leg workout in your weight training routine every week. If not for the large, strong and muscular legs you will develop, then do it for the overall gains you will experience in your upper body.
Just one more thing, don’t avoid Squats. They are such a great exercise for building mass all over your body, and can’t be replaced with any other exercise.
