Best exercises for leg muscle training

Leg muscles are an important component of the human body. When you train your legs, you’re not only targeting the designated muscles but you also help your other body muscles at different levels to achieve growth

Good lower body strength is essential for good performances in the gym as well as in different sporting activities. A common tragedy, yes I used the word “tragedy”, is that people tend to skip leg days without any reason or they just don’t like performing the leg exercises.

Here in this article we will tell you some leg muscle exercises which will assist you to gain mass on those quads and help you perform well in your activities.

SQUATS

For this particular exercise, a barbell is needed most essentially. Take a barbell and grab it with a wide grip – as wide as you can comfortably grasp. Reach under the barbell and then place it on your shoulders in such a way that your shoulder blades squeeze in.

Now, take a step back and position yourself in such a way that your toes are turned slightly outwards. Bend your hips back; bend your knees to lower your body as far as you can without losing the position of the lower back arch. Whilst doing that, push your knees outward as you descend. Now slowly move back up in the standing position and repeat the same motion again.

DEADLIFTS

Personally speaking, it’s one of my favorite exercises to perform when I do a leg or back workout. So the procedure is, you stand straight with your feet hip-width apart and your shins are slightly away from the barbell (one or two inch distance). Now to initiate the motion, you go down pushing your knees towards your arms (holding the barbell in the reverse grip or double-pronated grip). In the process, bring your chest up as much as possible and look straight. Now, as you move up to complete the motion, keep your back flat and extend your hips to stand.

LEG PRESS

For this exercise, you need to adjust yourself in such a way that your knees and feet are in alignment. Position your hip on to the seat of the machine. Remove the safeties from the periphery of the machine, lower your knees at chest level such that a 90 degree angle is formed and then push the weights back up to the starting position. Don’t push your legs to much such that they become parallel to the ground (because this can result in serious injury)

LUNGES

For lunges, you can either do it with your body weight or extended weights. By extended weights, we mean to say the use of dumbbells and barbell respectively. So the motion of this exercise is such that you have to step back and lower down with your right foot. Whilst doing this, the knee of left leg should touch the ground and the front leg (right) should be parallel with the floor. So when you’re done with this, switch to your left leg and repeat the same motion.

CALVES EXTENSION

For tackling the calves, you need to stand up on an elevated surface and then grip onto something firmly (which will provide you the support to complete this motion). Extend your feet in an upward position such that the heels come in level with the ankle. Now, lower your feet until you feel a stretch in your calves. The longer you hold the stretch, the better.

These are some of the exercises that can be used to increase your leg muscles and make them stronger. Try these for yourself and feel the difference.