You’ve always heard trainers, coaches, and fitness influencers saying you should never skip leg day, haven’t you? Have you ever wondered why? I mean, you may not really want bulky legs, you may want enormous and strong hands and core, why would you train legs? You may think that it is all about aesthetics and you’re wrong. But you may think that it is about getting strong legs, and you’re wrong again. Leg day is important because it is about both – aesthetics AND getting stronger legs (among numerous other benefits). First, you wouldn’t want to look like a gorilla, with a huge upper body and chicken legs and second, it does provide numerous other benefits when it comes to training the lower body.
Read this article and you’re going to find out more about the benefits of training your lower body. This way, you should never skip leg day. Additionally, I am also going to include some of my personal favorite exercises for building strength and muscle in your lower body during your leg day.
Keep in mind that these are just examples of leg day exercises. If you really want to build strong and aesthetically looking legs, you should implement numerous other exercises in your leg day workout. However, these are my personal favorites and the ones that will surely help you reap all the benefits I will share below.
Important Benefits of Training Lower Body
Improves balance and agility
The ability to stop, accelerate, change direction, and most locomotion movements will require good lower body strength. The more strength and muscle you have in your lower body, the better you can do it. It won’t only provide better agility, but it also leads to excellent balance, even including single leg balance. Moreover, it will provide more power to avoid falls and injuries. You are less likely to fall in the first place. And even if you do, you are less likely to get an injury. This is true both while you are training and in your day to day life.
Strengthens and corrects muscle imbalances
We do not even realize that everyone favors one side of their body over the other. Therefore, most imbalances may occur during daily activities or during any sports that you may play due to this. However, when you are training your lower body, you are strengthening and correcting those imbalances. You do so by strengthening the connective tissues around your lower body joints. Therefore, you will find much better stability and balance. For example, runners may regularly find that they are firmer and tighter in their quads than hamstrings. This may lead to muscle strains. Yet, by strengthening the hamstring they can prevent this.
Run faster
Strengthening your lower body is going to help you run faster. It will improve your neuromuscular coordination, power, and VO2 max. It is also going to help improve your coordination and stride efficiency, which will allow you to run faster as well.
Helps with daily life and sports-oriented activities
Whether you’re a swimmer, boxer, football, or basketball player, or whatever else, leg day is even more important. Working out your legs will help improve all these activities. Not only leg day exercising will help with sport-oriented activities, but it will also help with your daily life. Whether it comes to keeping balance, having very long walks, playing with your kids, grocery shopping, or whatever else – stronger and bigger legs will help with all of it!
Best Exercises For Leg Day
Barbell front squat
The barbell front squat is very similar to the back squat in terms of alignment. The difference is that instead of the barbell being behind you on your traps, it is in front of you. There are two different positions for your hands for this exercise: it is either shoulder width apart under the bar, or crossed over the bar. Keep a stable shelf for the barbell by keeping your elbows up. Then you do exactly as in the normal squat. Engaging your core, lower down allowing knees to follow the foot’s midline thrusting your hips back and down. Aim to get your thighs parallel to the floor as any other squat. Once you’ve reached your deepest range, keep your core engaged and drive up through your feet.
Benefits of the barbell front squat include:
- A more powerful lower body
- Targets lots of muscles: quadriceps, hamstring, glutes, back, and core
- Leads to improved leg strength and hypertrophy. It will help build both leg and back strength.
Single-leg Romanian deadlift
You start this movement as you would set up for a stiff-leg deadlift. Keep your feet hip-width apart and the barbell directly over the center of the feet. Prepare the working leg and keep the supporting leg back. Push your hips back and grab the bar with hands shoulder-width apart. Engage your core throughout the entire movement as you pull your shoulders down. Keep the barbell path close to the front leg as you rise. As you reach your knee, push your hips forward. When reaching the top position, lock in a slight posterior pelvic tilt. Descent pushing your hips back until you get to the knee. Drop the bar straight down. Switch legs.
Benefits of the single-leg Romanian deadlift:
- It will work your lower back, glutes, and hamstrings as it keeps a constant tension
- Similar to rack pulls, the single-leg Romanian deadlift is going to improve the upper back and lockout strength for the standard deadlift exercise.
Barbell hip thrust
For the barbell hip thrust, you will need a low bench of 16 inches or even shorter. You start by sitting on the bench with your back, with your shoulder blades sitting flush on the top of the bench. Keep a barbell across your hips. May use a barbell pad or towel under the bar to make it more comfortable (especially if involving heavy weights). Plant your feet hip-width apart and press into your feet to lift your hips off the ground. Keep the shoulders on the bench and your hips off the ground. You basically create a bridge (or tabletop) position. As soon as you reach the top of that bridge position, make sure that your chin is still tucked in. Lower back down in a controlled and slow manner, having a proper form.
Benefits of the hip thrust:
- It is an exercise that will build a lot of strength, power, and muscle in your glutes, more than any other hip extension exercise.
- By improving your glute strength, it will offer better overall stabilization of the core, pelvis, and lower back areas.
- It is not as technical and more accessible compared to other heavily loaded movements such as back squats or deadlifts and their variations.
Barbell split squat
You start this exercise by placing the barbell across your back, as you would in a back squat. Engage your core and draw elbows down and in. Create tension across your body to keep it stable. Staying focused on one spot may help. Take a step back with one leg and keep your shoulders and hips from tipping forward. Drop your back knee as close to the floor and press through the feet to return to the starting position. Once you complete all the reps on one leg, switch to the other leg.
Benefits of the barbell split squat
- Extremely effective at building stability
- Quads and glutes will build muscle and strength
- Significantly improves leg drive on each side, which helps your bilateral squats and deadlifts
- Will reduce strength imbalances in the lower body
Ready For Your Next Leg Day?
I’m pretty sure you are ready for your next leg day, especially after I shared these awesome leg day exercises and their benefits. Moreover, with HGH.to you are ready for the leg day more than ever. Anyone who wants to experience massive gains, enhance their performance in the gym, and speed up the results they gain will find HGH.to extremely helpful.
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