Sunday, December 14, 2008

Weekly Muscle Building Workouts for Your Legs

By Ricardo d Argence

Whether you are a professional bodybuilder, contact sports player or just someone getting your body in shape, it is imperative that you don't neglect your legs for many reasons. The legs are often over looked when working out, as people tend to work towards the bigger chest and arms. There are important reasons to work your legs just as much as the rest of your body.

If you have read at all, you know that muscle burns fat. Gaining muscle weight helps your overall workout, and your legs have a very high concentration of muscle. By building your leg muscles, you are increasing your body's ability to work harder by simply adding a few pounds of muscle to your legs.

The amount of mass in your legs allows the release of anabolic hormones, and your legs muscles will provide more of this growth hormone than the smaller muscle areas of your body. The amount of muscle in your leg outweighs your arms easily, so this just makes sense. The reason you want to release these hormones is to stimulate muscle growth.

For the sake of appearance, who wants to see somebody bulky on the top and thin at the bottom? Working out your legs provides a balanced body. You want to look great all over when exercising.

The best way to do a leg workout routine is to push those leg muscles to near failure. Perform 8 to 12 reps per set, doing 2-4 sets per exercise. It's advisable to work each major muscle with 2-5 different exercises (depending on your tolerance level and workout experience). It is imperative to rest between sets. Rest 45-60 seconds between each set so that your muscles can recover. This allows you to life the heavy weight again, but not to get so relaxed the anabolic hormones stop getting released.

There are a lot of exercises to help you strengthen your legs. Once you have selected the goals for your legs (lean and strong, or muscled up for strength), you will be able to select the right exercises. When working your legs it is important to warm up by running or some other form of cardio for at least five minutes. This prevents injuries by warming up your joints.

Exercises you can do include leg extensions, power cleans, squats, Romanian dead-lifts, hamstring curls, and calf rises, seated and standing. This is not an all-inclusive list, and the number of reps and sets need to be individualized to match you level

Be safe when doing any exercise routine, and make sure to ask a trainer about the proper form. All it takes is a little time and effort, and you'll have great looking legs in no time. If you can raise your metabolism and do workouts that target intensity training, you will find an improvement in many different activities. On top of improvement in your general activities you will feel a lot better physically and mentally. - 16928

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