Train your legs now!
Legs are foundation of the body, they are used
for standing, squating, walking, running, climbing and other important functions. Yet I
see very few people use or train their lower limbs. But I don't totally blame them. Kids
nowadays are already taught not to use their legs much. Don't believe me? Walk down any
shopping malls and you'll see many parents are still pushing their kids (some as old as
7-8 years of age) around in their prams. Talk about being spoilt, good grieve! To make
matter worst, the advancement of technologies and desk bound jobs (e.g. elevators, trains,
remote this, remote that) have all reduce the use of legs for activities to almost zero.
Can you visualise the condition of the legs of these people in their later years?
Even regular exercisers are no better in the
legs department. Great looking upper bodies are common in the gyms but how many of them
have a good, strong, healthy pair of legs? Maybe 1, 2 out of 10? Men loves to pump sets
after sets to get big chest, shoulders, back and arms but most never train their legs. At
the end of the day, they all looked like walking 'light bulbs'. Not nice. Women, on the
other hand, want to train or purposely avoid training their legs just so they could look
thin and weak like those of birds. Not pretty too. By the way, women are supposed to be a
little fleshy on their legs, for physiological reasons. And I tell you that they certainly
look sexier that way. So please don't be influenced by models and stars you see in
magazines and TV, being healthy is much more important. Anyway, the beauty associated with
'thinness' is slowly losing its popularity among superstar, the 'meatier', 'fleshier' look
is the in thing. Take a look at J Lo and Shakira.
To get a nice pair of toned, healthy and fit
looking legs is not that all difficult. Just throw in couple of sets of serious squats in
your exercise routine, and you'll have them. For now, forget about all those the fancy
exercises fitness magazines will tell you, squats are the truly best exercise for the
entire leg muscles - the quadriceps, butt, the adductors, abductors, hamstrings, and even
the calves, to a lesser degree. Many researches have confirmed, based on peak
Electromyography (EMG, a machine that records muscle activity), that squat is far superior
than leg press, leg curls, leg extension etc. for the targeted leg muscles.
In addition, your entire upper body is also
involved when you do squat. Squat also increases your testosterone production, great news
for men, and elevates your metabolic rate. It is by perhaps, THE most productive yet
highly under-utilized exercise, known to mankind.
Done properly, squat is very very safe. People
who have suffered injuries from squatting are doing it all wrong - too heavy weight used,
squatting below parallel, rounding of back etc. Get a real strength expert to teach you
how to do a free weight squat instead of learning it on your own. The amount of weight
used would determine the kind of legs development you would have. If you do not wish to
have big thighs, simply restrict the amount of weight used. If you want a pair of really
muscular thighs that even horses envy, then you have to squat with progressively heavier
and heavier weights.
