Photo by Dollar Gill on Unsplash
Anyone who is dedicated to their fitness understands the pain of leg day. It is universally acknowledged to be the most arduous muscle group to train due to the intensity of the exercises performed and the fact that you can’t get away with resting your legs afterwards. You have to walk around, after all.
Inevitably, this often leads to people skipping leg day for weeks on end – which can quickly lead to muscle imbalances, a top-heavy physique and a lack of athletic endurance.
Once you start to skip leg day often enough, it slips out of your training routine altogether, which makes it all the more difficult to reincorporate it at a later date. Furthermore, it never feels good to deliberately skip an exercise because it is painful, and this can lead to a lack of self-esteem and discipline for physical pursuits.
Instead of getting down at yourself about it, you should take a practical approach. If you hate leg day and find it easy to skip, then make it easier to complete and harder to skip – it’s that simple. Here are three ways to get leg day into your regular exercise regime:
Cycle to work
Leg day is at its most difficult when you are heading to the gym to train those muscles specifically. Not only are the exercises intense, but you can build the task up in your head, to the point where you avoid the gym on those days.
Instead, you should find a way to work it into other parts of your daily routine – such as the commute to and from work. During this otherwise wasted time, you could slot your leg day workout in by cycling instead of catching the train or driving. Although the journey will take longer, you will kill two birds with one stone.
Cycling is fantastic training for your legs and is a fantastic complement to a gym routine. This is because it trains the muscles in a different way, which effectively gives you the best of both worlds. To make it harder for you, try a fixie bicycle with a single gear – which will force you to strain harder on the pedals.
Develop a running habit
Another actionable way to build leg day into your routine easily is to start running. Although this still takes dedication and effort, it is more interesting than a conventional gym routine because you are out in the open air, people-watching, soaking up the vitamin D and constantly moving through different scenery.
Running, similarly, to cycling, develops your muscles in a different way to leg exercises at the gym, which will help you achieve an athletic physique.
Incorporate leg day into an existing workout routine
As you can gather by now, the best way to make sure you get leg day done is to trick your mind into thinking you aren’t doing it.
Forcing yourself to go to the gym just to do deadlifts, squats and lunges isn’t particular enticing, whereas if you perform full-body exercises which inadvertently train legs, you will find it easier to complete.
Whether it is goblin squats or bench presses, there are plenty of full-body exercises to choose from.