If you’re anything like me, then the one day of the week that you resent is leg day. It is an essential day in the workout routine for many more reasons then people, including me before researching this, know. Personally, I knew of some of the benefits, but really researching this topic has made me realize even more how important it is to make sure you incorporate leg day into your workouts. Lets go over the obvious ones first.

You don’t want to look like the guy who has a huge upper body and chicken legs. Seriously, you don’t want to be that guy or girl. Having a well-balanced body not only looks great, but also has many benefits that we’ll go over.

You get better abs by lifting legs. You use a lot more core than you think while doing leg workouts. There are people who never have to do specific abs workouts and can still have abs better than most because doing large compound lifts such as; squats, dead lifts, and Olympic lifts engage huge numbers of core muscles that can’t even be touched with doing abs workouts.

Your upper body gets stronger. By working your lower body, you are increasing your balance, your bench press, explosiveness and upper body as a whole. You can’t have a tree without a trunk, and people don’t realize how important it is for you to have a base with your workouts.  A tree without its trunk would topple over and the same goes for you. When trying to stand and do too heavy of curls you can topple over and this makes you more injury prone. Also, when you are benching you should plant your feet and drive with your legs and if you don’t have enough leg strength you can strain your quadriceps.

You burn large amount of calories. Because you are working such big muscles your heart rate raises higher than most other lifts and that causes you to burn a high amount of calories. You also most likely will sweat a good amount, and therefore increase the lean muscle mass in your legs, which will increase your metabolism.

Many back problems start with your lower body. Having uneven or non-existent lower body muscles is the root for a lot of posture and back problems. Weak glutes put more work on the lower back and hamstrings, leading to tight hip flexors that pull on the lumbar spine creating an anterior pelvic tilt, protruding the abdomen. The Williams Center has personal trainers who specialize on finding where your muscles are lacking and can help you fix problems like these.

Even though leg day may not be the most fun or ideal day of the week, it is one that we all have to power though. If you don’t believe me, do a simple Google search of why you shouldn’t skip legs day. The reasons are endless. If you need some simple exercises to start out with here are a few.

-Yesterday you said tomorrow

Eric Hess