Here’s a quick video I did the other day.
Whether you’re trying to gain weight or lose weight, your legs are may be the most important group of muscles to work.
Some of the biggest muscles in your body are in your legs; also, most exercises that work your legs are compound exercises – exercises working more than one muscle at a time – such as squats and deadlift which work multiple muscles in the lower body all in the same exercise.
This means that when you do a squat or lunge or deadlift, you end up burning more calories because your body needs to supply more energy to the muscle groups that are being worked. And if you’re working more muscle groups, and bigger muscles, then you’re burning more calories in doing so than you would be by working a single muscle group at a time or smaller muscles.
Compound exercises are also very important for gaining lean muscle mass.
Heavier lower body lifts like squats or deadlifts release growth hormone in your body. So, when you’re doing a legs day, you’re not just lifting for lower body size but rather helping your whole body gain lean muscle.
There is a lot of debate whether cardio is optimal for fat loss, and if you should be doing cardio when you’re trying to gain weight. My thoughts are that regardless of whether its the best thing for fat loss or weight gain or not, doing some cardio is always good for you.
My advice is to mix it up. Interval cardio is the best for burning fat and keeping your muscle from being burned as energy in the process. But the kinds of cardio you’re doing is also important. In the video I’m hitting the bag; changing up the speed as I go along. Jumprope is also great, and obviously stairs and sprints are great as well.
Try mixing it up as much as you can and have some fun with it at the same time.
