Yes ladies, now that it actually feels like summer, it's time to dig out the summer dresses and shorts that have been hidden in the back of the cupboard. It's also time to reveal those lovely legs and show off our lean thighs that you've been working on! But before we get started on your leg routine, I thought it best to tell you a few things about fat burning and the background to getting your legs into tip top shape.
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Can't spot reduce! The first point to remember when trying to lose fat is that no exercise will burn off fat from a particular area. Fat is lost evenly throughout the body and no amount of isolation exercises is going to remove that spot of fat. Just like 1000s of situps isn't necessary going to give you the washboard abs, or mega reps of tricep extension will give you tighter arms, doing hundereds of reps on the butt blaster isn't nessary going to get rid of the fat around your hip and thigh region. Not one exercise or exercise programme is going to give you the butt you're after but instead a combination of proper nutrition, aerobic exercise and weight training will give you the shape you want. |
Women are Hip! Men love it. Women try and get rid of it. Go Figure!
Hips are unique to women and it makes a woman a woman. Men have them too but they rarely complain about them or present problems like us women have. As females, our hips are structured wider for a reason - child bearing. However, our hips is an area where fat accumulates easily and is a big area of concern for many women. We don't necessary want to get rid of our hips all together but we do want to have a nice shapely figure. One way to achieve the figure you want is through weight training.
| Great Legs and butt, isn't that what every girl wants? In the past people thought aerobics alone was the best way to go when trying to reduce body fat. But now they realise that aerobics alone will compromise muscle tone, and if you don't have muscle tone, your metabolism slows down and your body ends up storing more fat. This results in many women looking thin, yet have flabby rather than firming the parts you want most, like firm hard legs and butt. right: Lisa puts Jill through a kick butt workout. Watch video now here! |
Since movement is the secret of body fat reduction, the best way to reduce in the area of hips and thighs, is with lower body exercises. The best method for reduction is to use a combination of weight training and aerobics to overload your body for change.
I believe in doing the basic movements of medium/heavy rep squats, step ups and lunges in all its forms - free, front, wide, on smith machine, with barbells/dumbells and the list goes on! There's also plenty of other torture devices that challenge your legs like hack squats, leg press, alternate leg press, leg extension and leg curls to give your legs a great burn.
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Variety of Weights and Aerobics
You need to constantly change your programme so that you're keeping your legs on their toes (so to speak). You'll need to periodise your training so that you use both heavy weights/low reps and medium weights/high reps, and varying rep tempo over different cycles so you're always stimulating your muscles and legs to change.
As you know, the key to fat burning is cardio exercise and you should do at least 4 x 30mins per week to enhance fat loss. There's the traditional gym based cardio work such as treadmill, cross trainier, rowing and stepper but why not hit the outdoors for a change of scene.
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Stadium steps, steep hills or long beach walks offer an alternative to your usual cardio workout. Once or twice a week go outdoors and you'll be surprised at how puffed you feel eventhough you may feel 'fit' in the gym. You'll also be using different muscles which also adds to your muscle definition and should try and hit the hills or outdoor steps to give your butt and legs a really great workout. You'll notice you'll breath a little harder and is much harder than what you do indoors. This, combined with other fat burners such as cycling, brisk walking, jogging and rowing will help you decrease your hips and enhance your feminine curves. |
Throw in some plyometrics!
If you're bored with the same old cardio routine, the same scenery outside or same old leg workouts, then why don't you throw in some plyometric workouts. I'm not a big cardio queen at the best of times so I have to come up with interesting and challenging ways to work both my cardio fitness and leg regime to give my legs a different stimulation. So if you're not a big cardio freak but would like to get benefits of cardio and the challenge of a new leg workout rolled into one then read on..
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I like to use plymoteric moves such as Frog Squats, Pop Squats, Side to side box lunges to really work the glutes and fire a whole set of different muscle fibres. So not only do you get a cardio workout but you end up using muscle fibres you don't usually stimulate in more controlled movements such as weighted squats or leg presses. I would still do a med/heavy leg session early in the week, then later in the week do a more dynamic leg train, in addition to the cardio that I do force myself to do ofcourse!
Sample workout. Below is the workout I took Jill through, try it if you dare!
Footnote: Jill did have rather sore glutes the next day, so go easy on this workout girlies! |
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