There are thousands of novice or intermediate gym-goers who don’t prioritise their legs. Most of them don’t even train legs at all. The lower body consists of some of the largest muscles in the entire human body and the need more training than any other muscles do. If you are skipping your leg days or don’t train your legs at all, your overall fitness journey will hamper a lot because working out legs is an integral part of the fitness and whatever your fitness goal is, a strong and muscular set of legs will help you a ton in it. There are numerous benefits of leg day but we have discussed the top 5 benefits of leg day that will make you realise why you should never skip leg day! Without further ado, let’s get started.
Don’t Miss: Push Pull Legs Workout Routine: How To Do, Benefits & More!
Helps to Burn More Calories & Boosts Cardiovascular Strength!
As we already have known that leg muscles are some of the largest muscle groups in our entire body, they need more oxygen and fuel than other muscles during workout. So, to supply that large amount of oxygen and fuel, your heart also needs to work harder to get blood sent to these large muscles for necessary fuel. This will lead to burn more calories than working out other muscle groups. Thus, it can promote weight loss indirectly.
Moreover, as your heart needs to work harder, this can also be a great cardiovascular exercise since this hard work makes your heart stronger and more endurable. This is one of the benefits of leg day that most of the fitness enthusiasts don’t realise.
More Test & HGH Release = More Muscle!
Yes, leg workout forces your body to release necessary hormones like cortisol, testosterone and human growth hormone (HGH) more than other workouts do. Cortisol helps your body to manage stress and fatigue while testosterone helps to increase the muscle protein synthesis that leads to more muscle gain and HGH obviously makes the muscles bigger and stronger. These 3 hormones also have many other benefits in your body apart from building muscle mass and reducing fatigue.
The reason why leg workout helps your body to release these necessary hormones is not because something is special about these leg muscles rather it happens because of the exercises we perform for legs. If you have noticed properly, we mostly use compound movements for legs – compound movements like squats, deadlifts, lunges, leg press that focus on multiple muscles of our lower body. Over the decades, multiple studies have confirmed that these heavy compound movements help our body release those abovementioned hormones more than other exercises. So, this is one of the greatest benefits of leg day you can’t miss if you want to gain muscles.
Also Read: 5 Best Exercises for Glutes ever for Strong & Muscular Glutes!
More Strength, Stability and Less Injury
Gluteus Maximus or in short, Glutes i.e. situated within the buttocks is the largest muscle in our body. It is large and it should be powerful because its job is to keep the upper body in an erect posture. So if you include leg day in your workout routine or prioritise leg workout more than your glutes can be stronger and helps you to maintain proper posture with ease. Moreover, strong glutes with the combination of strong quadriceps aka quads which is the second largest muscle in our body and hamstrings aka hams can help you a ton to maintain stability during heavy lifts in the gym.
For example, dumbbell row, barbell row, rack pull, barbell overhead shoulder press – these heavy exercises need accurate posture, form, balance and body stability to perform in a perfect way without any injury and these 3 lower body muscles – glutes, quads and hams will help you to do that. A stable and perfect form makes your lift easier and you can feel strong enough to lift even more! For this reason, if you don’t have strong leg muscles, you will struggle to master the forms and stability of several exercises for other muscle groups and your chance of getting injured will be higher due to poor form or stability and balance issues. This is one of the most underrated benefits of leg day that many people underestimate.
Read Now: Best Exercises for Quads [Big & Muscular Quads Guaranteed!]
Strengthens Your Core Muscles
I think we all can agree with the fact that every exercise has some primary muscles to target and some secondary ones to target. Just like when we do bench press, the primary muscle that is targeted is the pectorals but the secondary muscle that is targeted is the front deltoids. Same thing goes for many leg exercises especially squats and leg press. The primary muscles these exercises target are glutes, quads and hams while the secondary muscle that can be targeted is abdomen. It is obvious that a secondarily targeted muscle can never be as strong and muscular as the primarily targeted one and that secondary muscle needs its own exercises yet that muscle can get strong to some extent.
Squats and leg press really will help you to not only make your legs strong and muscular but also assist to make your core muscles strong. Strong core muscles ultimately improve your balance and stability while working out different exercises for different body parts so that you can do them with proper form safely without the fear of any injury. After all, we all know that core gets engaged in almost any kind of exercises and it is an essential part of our body that helps in maintaining stability, balance and proper posture during various exercises. For this reason, strengthening the core muscles is another excellent benefit of leg day that you should not overlook.
Also Read: 5 Best Exercises for The Hamstrings You Shouldn’t Miss!
Improves Your Overall Look!
A strong and muscular lower body not only helps immensely in your fitness goals but also contributes in your overall look. If you are thinking that only big biceps and muscular chest will make you look attractive than think again! A muscular and rounded pair of buttocks with a good amount of glutes muscle is also very attractive to most of the people regardless of gender. However, it’s vice versa. Females like it on males and males obviously find it attractive on females. For this reason, if you are ignoring your leg days, you are really missing your chance to be even more attractive!
Moreover, a strong, muscular upper body with a weak and skinny lower body gives you an unbalanced and disproportionate look that is not attractive at all in my opinion. It more looks like a chicken which obviously no one should wish for.
That is another reason why you should not miss leg day and should start getting serious about gaining muscles in your quads and glutes so that you will look proportionate and attractive as well.
The Bottom Line
Toning and sculpting legs, improving overall fitness, reducing joint and lower back pain, strengthening bones, boosting cognitive functions are some of the other benefits of leg day or working out legs. Hopefully, these top 5 benefits we have discussed in this article are more than enough to make you realise how important it is to train the legs. And, if you are really serious in your fitness goal, you should never skip leg day until you have some other issues to handle. Just like you train hard on your chest or arms days, train your legs with the same intensity. Prioritise your lower body as much as you do for the upper body if you don’t want to miss a larger part of your body from being fit and muscular. Lastly, hope you have found this article about benefits of leg day helpful enough. If it is really so then don’t hesitate to express your valuable thoughts in the comment section below. Thanks for visiting and appreciating our work.