Guys: You really need to stop skipping leg day Guys: You really need to stop skipping leg day
Centr Team
08 May 2019
OK guys, we’d like your honesty here – if you almost never train your lower body, raise your hand. Maybe you’d like to do more leg days but never get around to it. Or maybe you’ve been so focused on gains in your chest and arms that you’d forgotten you had a lower body entirely.
Good news: We’ve got a few secrets to share about training your legs and glutes. Here’s why your lower half matters, and why you’ll be kicking yourself for not starting sooner.
Lower-body training lets you lift more weight
If your goal is to get stronger, leaner, lift more weight, press heavier or to get as close as you can to being Hulk-like, then you need to train your lower body, too.
Let’s think about muscle size throughout the lower body for a moment. Your glutes and quads are the biggest muscle groups around, followed by your hamstrings. They are powerhouse muscles that have the potential to move high volumes of weight and, if used correctly, can be the driving force behind various upper body exercises, too.
Take a deadlift, for example, which you’ll find in Torre’s strength workouts. The driving force in a deadlift is the lower body – glutes, quads, hamstrings – followed closely by the core, lower back, traps and rhomboids.
Likewise, thrusters – which you’ll see in Luke’s HIRT sessions – are powered by the lower body through the squat. Strength from the legs is transferred to the upper body through the core and the back and on to the shoulders to push weight above the head.
These are just two examples of exercises that use the lower body to gain strength and power through the upper body, too. Give them a go on a regular basis and see how much stronger your regular shoulder press and bent over rows, for example, become.
Strong legs mean you’ll avoid injury
Many lower back twinges, pains and injuries can be related to weaknesses elsewhere in the body. When big muscle groups are weak, the back takes the brunt of movements until it has enough and calls it quits.
Building strength in the glutes, quads, hamstrings and core can be a great way to take pressure off the back and give it a break*. Squats, deadlifts, lunges, step-ups and glute bridges are all great exercises for this. You’ll find them included in Torre, Luke, Tiff and Bobby’s workouts, not to mention Da Rulk’s vertical leaps and hostages.
More muscles, more fuel burning
After any big strength workout or a high paced HIIT, HIRT or MMA session, the body gets a boost in EPOC. EPOC is excess post-exercise oxygen consumption which occurs after exercise when your body needs to recover back to its pre-workout state. The body draws on more fuel than usual at rest to restore the worked muscles, turning up your metabolism and burning additional calories in the process.
The bigger the muscle group trained, the more it needs to recover and the bigger the EPOC. If you’ve ever had a big leg session and felt pretty wiped for the rest of the day, this is a contributing factor.
Lower-body workouts lead to overall balance
Okay, we’re going there. You know the guys we’re talking about – the ones who only train upper body. Their backs are ripped, arms are shredded, chests are pumped – but they have tiny little legs, completely out of proportion to their body. You may have heard people say they look like “chicken legs".
If you’d rather have an evenly balanced physique, you need to include lower-body exercises in your training routines.
*If you have a current or previous back injury, please check with your physical therapist or GP before starting a training plan. All injuries are different and recovery exercises should be prescribed accordingly.
