The (Very Hard To Believe) Benefits Of Leg Day
One of the benefits of leg day is a nice ass.
That’s something every man likes and is why the graphic image for this post is of a woman’s because there was no way you, the post’s target demographic, would read it otherwise!
Now that you’ve fallen into my trap and I have your attention, fella…
It breaks whatever’s left of my wee wittle heart that people don’t love leg day to the moon and back.
I’m truly saddened by our living in a world where there are people who don’t love leg day enough to call it “bae” and other idiotic pet names! A world with people who don’t love leg day enough to write love letters to it!! A world populated with people who don’t love leg day enough to have put a ring on it yet!!!
I mean, how can you not love leg day with every fiber of your being?!?!
Speaking of fibers, when other than leg day can you feel every muscle fiber begging and pleading for you to stop? But unless you’re a pussy, you don’t. Instead, you keep challenging your testicular fortitude.1Or, because I’m not a sexist jerk, you keep going as a testament to your ovarian stick-to-itiveness.
Oh leg day, how I adore thee!!!
…but I’m the exception, not the norm.
Go to virtually any gym and what do you see?
Yeah, nothing but leg day skipping gym brahs!
That’s because most dudes hate — HATE!!! — training their lower body.
They clearly don’t know the benefits of leg day. Telling by your light bulb physique, you fit into the leg day skipping category too.2Light bulb physique? Yeah, you’re big up top and have nothing on the bottom. Like I said, light bulb physique! So allow me to tell you a few reasons why you should love leg day as much as I do.
ONE
Want a cobra-wide back? Barrel-sized chest? Mountain peak biceps? Door frame busting shoulders?
Your ticket to all of those glorious things is leg training.
…or at least that’s what common thinking is.
The most popular reason given for training legs is that multi-joint exercises like squats and deadlifts place an inordinate amount of stress on the central nervous system, resulting in a release of testosterone and growth hormone (GH), the chemical messengers responsible for muscle building. Primed by this anabolic environment, the entire body grows.
While lower body compound movements do produce test and GH, this acute increase in anabolic hormones has little to no effect on muscle protein synthesis. In other words, you’re basically wasting your time if you’re squatting for the sole purpose of jacking up your test so you can get jacked.3If that’s your goal, you can avoid leg training altogether and just buy test and GH and have your training partner inject them into your keister in a protein-fart smelling bathroom stall at the gym!
I know, telling you about a reason not to train legs is quite a way to start running down why you should, but the following ties into the above.
The legs make up the largest muscle group in the human body and squats, deadlifts, and other compound movements produce stress throughout the entire body. Well, muscle growth is about introducing enough stress to the body so that it forces a physical adaptation to overcome that stimuli. So while an acute increase in anabolic hormones from leg training won’t make you grow, the stress produced from squats and deadlifts will, as a response is prompted over a wide expanse of the body.
Basically, because the human body tries to maintain as much of a balance as possible, other parts of the body will grow to remain in proportion with the legs.
SO YEAH, THAT’S WHY YOU SHOULD TRAIN LEGS!!!
TWO
As mentioned, the legs make up the largest muscle group in the human body, with the gluteus maximus being the largest muscle. Now, because larger muscles require more energy from the heart and brain and compound lower body exercises call for the recruitment of various muscle groups across the body to execute the movement, more calories get burned training legs than when training smaller muscle groups.
SO YEAH, THAT’S WHY YOU SHOULD TRAIN LEGS!!!
THREE
As the largest muscle group in the human body, the legs clearly play an important role in body composition. In a more obvious way of how leg training helps with physical appearance, leg training affects overall aesthetics by making you look symmetrical.
You know, the chances are high that you look kinda stupid if you have small legs and a huge upper body!
SO YEAH, THAT’S WHY YOU SHOULD TRAIN LEGS!!!
FOUR
In addition to looking stupid if you don’t train your legs, you’ll more than likely have back pain too and be a Despicable Me looking motherfucker.4You know, like Gru! In truth, I’ve never seen the movie. I’m only including this pop culture reference to help me seem more up-to-date on things that I really am.
Why?
Well, what happens when the structural base of something is weak?
Hmmmmm…
This is just a shot in the dark here, but I think other parts of the structure get called on to hold the object up…before it eventually topples. The body is the same exact way, with the legs serving as the foundation and holding the weight of the entire upper half. When the leg muscles are deficient in strength and asked to hold a massive trunk, that places pressure on the lower back to stabilize everything.
SO YEAH, THAT’S WHY YOU SHOULD TRAIN LEGS!!!
Besides just getting sadistic joy out of harming yourself like autoerotic asphyxiation, there are a few benefits of leg day.
But, you say, leg training is hard as FAWK!!!
Why is leg day so hard?
Well, because the leg muscles are used every day to carry the weight of your body around, they’re accustomed to taking a beating. That being the case, it requires a considerable amount of effort to make the legs grow. Many lifters simply aren’t down for this, essentially doing the high volume work of 15-20 reps with moderate to heavy weight that’s necessary for the legs to have a growth response.5Yes, that’s what your leg day workout should look like, for the most part!
If able to endure the pain while working out, many complain about the after effects. Because it takes a huge amount of stress to prompt an adaptation in the legs, recovery can take longer than it does for the beach muscles.
Some people just don’t like experiencing debilitating soreness for several days removed from their last training bout, the kind of soreness that necessitates their rolling themselves around in a wheelchair and having to use handrails to get up from the crapper. These are the people who are more prone to train their legs infrequently, if at all.
That’s the thing, though.
The experiencing of soreness is just the body adapting to new stress so it can better handle it the next time. After prolonged exposure to that stress, soreness goes away.
So if you’re not training your legs frequently because you don’t like the feeling of delayed onset muscle soreness(DOMS), then how are you going to stop the soreness from happening?
Huh?!
Huh?!?!6Exposing your legs to damage more often to reduce soreness is one of the benefits of working out your legs twice a week. The most obvious benefit of multiple leg days is the ability to focus on the quads one session and the hamstrings or glutes the other. Yeah, it might make sense to do that because the legs are the biggest muscle group so cramming everything into one day might not be enough.
Leg day is hard, but what’s up with so many dudes skipping it?
While it can be rightfully said that leg day skippers with two working legs are nothing but pussies, there’s a little bit more to it than there being an overabundance of walking vaginas pretending to be men.
The avoidance of leg day is primarily physio-psychological.
Ambulation is a basic human need, and our ability to walk is temporarily hampered after a thorough leg session, especially when legs aren’t trained often enough. Our brain resists this loss of mobility, as if we’re Benjamin Buttoning back to early childhood and crawling around on fours. So the weak among us come up with bullshit excuses for not being able to train legs, like an old football injury suddenly flaring up out of nowhere or you not being able to make it to train legs because a kidnapper called to inform you that he has your wife and loved ones held hostage and their lives hang in the balance.7Maybe it’s just me, but you can remarry and have more children. Make up a missed leg session? Not so much!
As for why men are more likely not to train legs than women, it also has to do with physiology.
Women respond to training differently than men because they lift less efficiently. In other words, men are able to recruit more of the maximum number of motor units to contract, resulting in the target muscle getting more of the work, which in turn stresses the central nervous system more and leads to it needing extra recovery time. It’s due to this difference in neuromuscular efficiency that a man will be sorer the day after leg day than a woman. As such, the odds are higher of him proverbially behaving like one.
The person who suffers through leg day is going to be bigger and stronger, have a higher metabolic rate, be more proportionate, and have a reduced risk of injury than the person who finds a convenient excuse to always pussy out.
Considering these benefits, why would you NOT train legs?
Like, seriously.
You’re already of low character, so lowering yourself to do squats and lunges shouldn’t be that much of a problem, fucker!