Don’t ya’ just love leg day??  I sure do!  There are SO many reasons to focus on building lean muscles in our legs & glutes, that you can either LOVE leg day, or love to HATE leg day, but you have to embrace it either way.

Whether you are looking to lose weight, tone up, or just look and feel your best, your number one goal should be to increase your lean muscle mass.  We can only accomplish this by doing strength building exercises. Sorry to break it to you, my sweet cardio junkies, but if you want to make lasting changes, you need to build some muscle!

WHY??  Because muscle burns CALORIES!  The more lean muscle mass you have, especially in your large muscle groups (legs, glutes, chest, back, core), the faster your rate of metabolism will become.  Faster metabolism = more calories burned.  You can do cardio all day long, and while you will burn calories DURING your workout, you will have done nothing to increase your overall rate of metabolism, which will allow you to burn calories at a higher rate all throughout the day.

If you’d like to know a little more about why you should incorporate strength training into your workout, please check out this periscope broadcast where I explain why we (especially women) should be focusing more on strength training than cardio.

If you’re looking to shake up your leg day a bit, or you’re just getting started with strength training, I’ve put together a little leg day routine for you.  It’s is a quick and effective workout, using little to no equipment, that can be done just about anywhere. Not only will it get your legs burning, but it will also get your heart rate up, and even incorporates a little shoulder and core work.  Why not kill two birds with one stone, right?

If you’d like to see me showing the moves in person, here’s a link to the periscope broadcast where I walk you through the routine.  It’s a series of 4 sequences, each containing 3 different exercises to be completed for 1 minute each. The idea is to go through the entire thing twice for a well rounded strength routine that’s sure to build some muscle and have you breaking a sweat!

Here’s the workout:

HAPPY SQUATTING!

xoxo,
Malea