Does leg day burn belly fat?

Your lower body is the foundation for nearly every daily activity and lift.

But crafting an excellent lower body workout is about more than just a leg day.

Sure, your legs are your literal lower body, but there are so many variations to what “leg day” can look like.

Depending on your goals, the possibilities for lower body workouts are pretty much endless.

Read on to learn how your lower-body muscles work, why you need to train them, and the best lower-body workouts for specific goals.

Best Lower Body Workouts


Best Lower Body Workout for Strength

Regardless of your goals, the most effective work is typically going to involve compound movements.

With your lower body, the bread and butter movements will be squats and deadlifts.

When you’re training for strength, these lifts are even more vital, as they recruit the highest number of muscles and allow for a lot of loading.

You’ll want to go from moderately to very heavy when you’re building strength in your lower body — so choose your weights carefully.

Always make sure your form is locked in- you don’t want to build the illusion of strength by racking up weights without hitting depth.

The Workout

Depending on your training age (meaning how many years you’ve been working out), perform this workout two or three times per week.

If you’re doing it twice a week, alternate between back squats and deadlifts where indicated.

If you’re training three times, go in the order of squat-deadlift-squat.

Make sure you’re resting in the range of two and four minutes between sets.

You’ll need this time to fully recover and maximize each effort, so take the time and mentally lock-in.

Use sufficiently heavy weights so that you’re training to near failure at the prescribed rep ranges.


Best Lower Body Workout for Muscle Growth

Even if you’re trying to build muscle in your upper body, lower body hypertrophy should be a top priority.

When you build your leg muscles, you’re promoting overall growth across your body.

You’ll also be creating a strong foundation with which to handle your heavy upper body lifts.

If the aim is muscle growth, you’ll traditionally want to use moderately heavy weights.

Make sure your form is flawless, especially when you’re hitting the upper rep range.

The Workout

You don’t need to go ham on isolating your hamstrings when you’re trying to build leg muscles.

Compound movements are still your best bet — they target more muscle groups and activate your muscles under heavier weight. Perform this workout two or three times per week.

Once again, alternate the squat and deadlift where indicated, with squats happening twice a week if desired.

Make sure your recovery is spot on — that means eating and sleeping for muscle growth.


Best Lower Body Workout for Power

You can be tremendously strong or have huge muscles and not be very powerful.

Power refers to how quickly a given weight is being moved.

Think about it this way: are you more powerful if you’re grinding a 315 lift slowly, or if it moves quickly and easily?

Training to increase your power will cross over into making you stronger and building more muscles.

You’ll also run faster, jump higher, and move more functionally in general.

The Workout

Since you’ll be lifting fairly heavy with an emphasis on speed, you won’t perform as many reps as you might be used to with the lifting component.

You’ll still want to take relatively long rests — think two to four minutes between sets.

You might tend to get a bit breathless, especially if performing cardio and/or explosive movements isn’t part of your typical training regimen.

Focus on taking slow, deep breaths if you can — it’ll feel tough at first, but you’ll recover faster.


Best Bodyweight Lower Body Workout

You don’t need heavy weights to have a tough leg day.

You can build lower body muscle and strength without weights at all — you’ll need to be a little creative.

To get a solid bodyweight lower body workout, you want to go as close to failure as you can with most moves.

That way, you’re stimulating your body as much as possible, sans equipment.

The Workout

This one is accessible with no equipment (except a chair or couch for the rear foot elevated split squats).

It’s also great for a combination of goals. It’ll help you build strength with the sheer volume and intensity you’ll be working with.

You’ll also stimulate muscle growth with the explosivity of the moves. Where indicated, choose a set length of 30, 45, or 60 seconds based on your experience and comfort level.

Perform as many reps as possible (AMRAP) during your selected time and rest double that time in between.

  • Squat Hold: 4 x 30-60 second hold
  • Squat Jump: 4 x 30-60 second AMRAP
  • 1.5 Rear Foot-Elevated Bulgarian Split Squat*: 4 x 15 per side
  • Lateral Lunge: 4 x 15 per side
  • Marching Glute Bridge: 4 x 15 per side
  • Lateral Bound: 4 x 30-60 second AMRAP

*Sink all the way down, come up just halfway, and then sink back down and come all the way up. That’s one full rep. 


Best Lower Body Workout for Fat Loss

When your goal is to change your body composition, one of the best places to start is lifting weights.

A particular focus on strengthening your lower body ensures that your body’s biggest muscle groups are involved in your efforts. This will help maximize muscle gain and energy expenditure — making it easier to lose body fat.

The Workout

You’ll see in this workout a mixture of strength, power, and bodyweight training.

This diversity allows an athlete to build the kind of strength and musculature that’s helpful for altering body composition.

Adding bodyweight moves to the mix will supplement those strength and muscle gains while also providing fat burning and cardio-esque benefits of their own.

  • Deadlift: 4 x 12
  • Squat Clean: 4 x 5
  • 1.5 Rear Foot-Elevated Bulgarian Split Squat: 4 x 15 per side
  • Jumping Lunge: 4 x 15 per side
  • Lateral Bound: 4 x 15 per side

 

How to Program Lower Body Workouts

Since they are so energetically demanding, you’ll likely want to flesh your schedule out around your lower body sessions.

In other words, if you know you want to squat twice a week and deadlift once a week, assess your recovery needs and add in your upper body movements accordingly.

Many lifters will opt to bench press on the days they squat and overhead press on the days they deadlift.

But, there are plenty of excellent workout splits for strength training to choose from.

Whatever split you choose, prioritize recovery first and foremost.

Under normal circumstances, you don’t want to be squatting heavy and then deadlifting heavy the very next day.

As you begin to train, pay attention to how your body responds to training.

Some people experience a lot more fatigue after heavy squat days; others get more wiped out by intense deadlifting sessions. Consider using a training journal to keep note of not only what you’ve lifted but how you feel.

Once you know a bit more about how your body recovers, you can program your lower body training more specifically.

For example, you might not be able to tolerate heavy deadlifting 48 hours after heavy squatting — so consider doing a lighter volume squat day before deadlifting instead.

How to Warm-Up Your Lower Body

As with any workout, you’ll always want to warm up thoroughly before you dive into your session.

But just because you’re focusing on your lower body doesn’t mean your warmup shouldn’t include anything above your waist.

The sample lower body warmup below includes activation exercises for your shoulders and upper back — don’t neglect these.

You’ll need your traps, lats, and rear delts ready for action with lower body workouts, especially when you’re lifting weights.

You’ll reduce the risk of injury and improve your lifting efficiency by warming up, so make sure to perform each move with intention.

Lower Body Warm-Up

  • 90/90 flow: 3 x 45 seconds
  • Deep squat shifts with a kettlebell: 3 x 45 seconds
  • Inchworm to Hip Opener: 3 x 12 per side
  • Squat Sit to Reach: 3 x 10 per side
  • Band Pull-Apart: 3 x 15-20

Lower body workouts are essential for your training.

Whether you’re looking to build strength, gain muscle, improve your power, or change your body composition, start with your lower body.

Each type of lower body workout will have crossover into the others — trying to gain muscle will get you stronger, and improving your power will help you gain muscle.

Assess your main goals, select a lower body workout that matches those goals most closely, and get after it.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. Healthy Supplies Shop is  not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information on this article. All information is provided on an as-is basis. The information, facts or opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of healthy supplies shop  and we do not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.