Every bodybuilder wants to have a training plan that would lead him/her to the fastest, meatiest gains possible without extended delays, and that’s especially true in the case of leg development.
Who even enjoys doing that anyway? Legs can be really hard to train, considering that squatting properly can take quite a while to master and a good leg session inevitably leads to out-of-this-world soreness.
On top of that, well-developed legs will never be a widely recognized symbol of ultimate strength and power in the way mighty pecs or bi’s are!
However, unless your only reason to go to the gym is trimming your beach body in order to impress some ladies, you should definitely invest all the effort required to sculpt massive, chiseled legs.
Besides, who on earth would applaud a trainee with toothpick legs, especially if they have a huge upper body, thus accentuating the lack of aesthetic proportions even further?
Read more about the phenomenal benefits of hard leg training in this article!
Benefits of Training Legs
Sadly, way too many beginners make the mistake of skipping leg training or throwing in a couple of half-assed sets of leg curls every now and then. This helps create a ridiculous imbalance between the size of their upper and lower body which can be very difficult to correct later on.
If your appreciation for aesthetics is on the minimum level or hopefully above, you will want to build a well-balanced, symmetrical physique that makes you stand out from the crowd on more accounts than hugeness only.
Look at any guy who does train legs on a regular basis – almost all of them sport well-balanced physique and have the respect of other bodybuilders because they dial in all that hard work that chicken-legged dudes are scared of.
Anyway, here are the most important benefits you can reap from regularly hammering your lower body musculature.
Related : 5 Main Reasons Why You Still Have Skinny Legs
1. Optimized Performance
Legs are best trained with heavy compound movements such as squats. And squatting regularly will improve your overall performance and strength, help you build inhumanely strong quads, hams, calves and glutes, and force your body to improve its stability and balance.
In addition, have you ever considered the fact that having really strong legs will be of tremendous significance to improving your upper body gains?
Train your legs to enhance your ability to drive the weight up more effectively at the bench press, shoulder press and deadlift, and burst through plateaus like they never happened.
2. Raw Mental Power!
Besides helping you reach your maximum potential as a lifter, leg training will absolutely help you – no, FORCE you – to build that famed mental toughness bodybuilders often are credited for.
This is all about getting to know your limits and breaking them just a little bit harder every time, despite the fact that every inch of your body is screaming for you to stop.
Being mentally ready to walk that extra mile is what pays off at the end of the day – and we would argue that it’s even more important than having the greatest program.
Exercises can be mastered in a few weeks – mental toughness can only be acquired by months, if not years, of pumping that iron like there’s no tomorrow. And perhaps the best part of it is that gym-earned fortitude translates very easily into all areas of life.
3. Your Weaknesses Can Become Your Most Powerful Tools!
Here’s one phrase we’re sure you’ve heard before: “you’re only as strong as your weakest link”. Now, we know lots of popular motos that are in fact totally stupid and/or useless, but this one is as true as they get.
First of all, people’s attention will always be drawn to the weakest link – we all love finding the hidden (or not so hidden) imperfections and pointing out the flaws in others (and this is especially true for the ladies).
And more importantly, since your muscles have to work together as a chain to help you lift heavy stuff, your overall strength and endurance can suffer greatly from you being too much of a lazy a*s to address and overcome your weakest points.
4. Hormonal Heaven
If you train your legs with compound movements, as we strongly recommend you do, you’ll be in a position to reap one more incredible benefit from it: spiked testosterone and growth hormone levels, at least in the short run. And as you’re very well aware – low testosterone = poor muscle growth.
For example, since the squat trains so many large muscle groups at once, your body naturally responds by increasing testosterone production and allowing you to make splendid gains even from gym sessions that otherwise wouldn’t count as anything spectacular.
And if you train hard and heavy, this testosterone boost will lead you right on the road to sculpting an awe-inspiring, Greek-god physique. Oh, and by the way, the peaking testosterone levels will help you add more upper body mass, faster than you could have dreamed, too.
Also…
The fact that you can’t afford to skip leg day doesn’t mean that you have to slave for hours at the gym every other day, following overly complex and high-tech programs to get the results you want.
Really, that’s one of the stupidest things people do that actually makes them hate leg training even more. Focus on the basic movements such as squats (utilize as many variants as possible!), lunges, leg curls and calf raises.
Just remember: the best bodybuilders around aren’t the ones who will do just any workout or avoid exercises they deem ‘too hard’ or pick just any weight they see lying around – on the contrary, those are the men and women who select the best exercises for mass building, choose their load based on what optimally builds size in their own experience as well as the experience of those who came before them, and they are not afraid of hard work and real pain.
You can have the world’s greatest workout program, but if you don’t take your training seriously, you’ll only end up wasting your time and getting weak results.
