Here will be explained five general leg principles needed to be taken into consideration when engaging into a workout plan for strong, muscular legs.
Functional Exercises for Heavy Sets
Forgo leg curls and leg extensions, the human body was not designed to extend and flex our knees while adopting a seated position. These machine-based exercises with heavy weights can contribute to structural problems like muscular imbalances and patellar tendonitis, which can set your training goals back by weeks.
To make sure your training goes smoothly go with a functional exercise routine by, namely squatting and deadlifting. These exercises should be the backbone of any leg training routine. It is important to focus on correct methods and techniques and you will see the changes manifest before your eyes. Consider acquiring a pair of knee wraps to ensure the safety and support of your knees.
Ensure Workout Balance in Both Legs
As is with hands, everyone is either right or left body dominant and one side of the body is doing a bit more work than the other side. Make sure your workout is done in such a way that you compensate if you feel one side of your body is falling behind. Adding single leg squats, lunges or single leg deadlifts can help your less-dominant side keep up and develop in tangent with your dominant side and as such prevent muscular imbalances.
Train the Stabilizers
In your hips are located a group of small stabilizing muscles which assist in preventing injuries and ensure a correct motion and stability in the hips and the pelvis. This is one of the most commonly neglected muscle groups people fail to train and as such it’s the cause for injuries at the gym. The outer thigh (abductors) and inner thigh (adductors) need to be worked out as part of the warm-up routine prior to conducting the squats and deadlifts.
Warming up prior to working out
For proper leg training, simply running on a treadmill for 20 minutes is not sufficient and will constitute a risk to your health if you only do that. Cardiovascular training does very little to prepare your body for a leg workout. Ensure that you always warm up the legs by actively stretching for 10-15 minutes and make sure you also do lots of movement based training prior to stabilization work.
Toning your Legs with Isolation Movements
As previously mentioned, leg extension and curl machines are not an efficient nor is it a healthy way of training but they can be used for the purpose of toning the legs. This can be done by tweaking the resistance to a light-moderate level and perform many repetitions on these machines. This will definitely contribute in perfecting the definition of your hamstrings and quads but make sure you set up the machines properly and yourself on them as well to prevent any injuries to the knees.
