Improve your pins with these pro tips!

While most men spend much of their training time focusing on the muscles above the waist (chest, arms, back), let’s face it, women are often more concerned with the parts below the waist. Whether you want to run faster, get stronger, or look amazing in a short skirt, legwork probably takes up a lot of your time in the gym.

If that’s the case, you’re in luck, because over the last few years, we’ve spent a lot of time talking to the owners of arguably the best pairs of pins in the fitness business. Here are her secrets to strong, sexy legs.

  • Because your upper body and gravity already offer resistance during leg training, you can increase the intensity of squats, lunges, and similar movements in ways other than simply lifting weights. A great way to increase intensity is to slow down from, say, a normal count of two or three to a count of five on the way down. If you want to get radical, you can even stop a couple of times for a few seconds, descending in steps.
  • If you do unilateral exercises and find that one leg is stronger than the other, train the weak leg first and let it determine how much weight you use and how many reps you complete. On leg press, for example, if you can do 10 reps with your right leg and 15 with your left, do 10 for both until your right catches up with you.
  • As you squat and lunge, focus on keeping your glutes engaged. People often think of them as exercises for just the legs, because that’s where the movement happens, but the glutes handle much of the load. Squeeze your muscles throughout the exercise.
  • People often debate whether to get back up from the squat immediately or pause for a second or two at the bottom, but the best strategy for most types of squats is an intermediate technique called “spring back” that It’s not a huge bounce, but enough so that the change in direction uses some of the elastic energy transfer in your body.
  • Try something different every time you train legs. Everything you can think of. Never get stuck.
  • Mix up your leg training as much as possible. This is almost as important as rest when it comes to allowing your muscles to recover from workout to workout. If you don’t want to dedicate full month-long cycles to, say, heavy leg training, throw a heavy leg day into the mix from time to time. Everything from your central nervous system to your growth hormones will respond differently on that day, and you’ll be less likely to plateau as a result.
  • The biggest mistake beginners make is training their legs too often. If they’re training according to a body part division, most women don’t really need to train their legs more than once every five days or so. If you are an athlete and your legs are used to a greater stimulus, your frequency could be 3 days or so.
  • Do a lot of cardio. Running and stair climbing in particular are not only good for cardiorespiratory endurance, but also for sculpting your legs and glutes. Increase the focus on your glutes by taking two steps at a time to increase your hip extension angle.
  • In squats and lunges, always keep your knees in line with your feet. Once your knees move forward, they are in a compromised position that can lead to injury. Also, don’t fail at these exercises until you’ve mastered the proper technique.
  • Don’t avoid leg exercises just because they feel uncomfortable or difficult at first. Is it easier to master the leg extension than the lunge? Absolutely. Does that mean you shouldn’t bother with lunges? Absolutely not. Because lunges require you to use more than one set of joints, recruit a lot more auxiliary muscles, and require more balance, they’ll be harder to do at first, it’s the nature of the beast. That’s why you should be doing them, not avoiding them.

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