Here's Exactly What to Do on Leg Day

Your legs power you through your most active habits: walking, running, swimming, lifting and so many others. So it should come as little surprise that the legs house the biggest muscles in the body: your glutes and thighs.

With all the activity, you may be tempted to think your legs are getting enough of a workout through everyday life. But it's important to dedicate a day or two in your weekly workout regimen to focus on your lower body. So here's your ultimate guide to leg day.

You may have seen your gym-addict friend posting about #LegDay on Instagram, but what does that actually entail? At the most basic level, it's exactly what it sounds like — the day of the week you devote to working your leg muscles.

Though many beginners (and athletes of all fitness levels) benefit most from full-body workouts, many intermediate and advanced lifters opt to separate their workouts by muscle group.

Besides the general benefits of weightlifting — more lean muscle mass, decreased body fat and stronger bones — some of the largest muscle groups in your body are in your legs, which is why it's important to never skip leg day, says Lindsey Mathews, head trainer for IdealFit.com.

"When you train these large muscles, it promotes the release of hormones that help build lean muscle mass," she says. "This helps maximize your results for all the other muscle groups."

But the muscles involved are not only legs — glutes, quads and hamstrings as mentioned above, plus the muscles in your calves — but other muscles groups as well. For example, back squats work your quads, glutes and hamstrings, but also your core and upper-back muscles, because you need to support a barbell.

"Having a strong lower body also helps with most other physical activities, such as running, biking and sports, and it can also help you to be less prone to injury," Mathews says.

​Read more:​ 13 Benefits of Weightlifting That No One Tells You About

If you're taking a body-part-split approach, you should try to devote equal time every week to each of your major muscle groups. You should also allow them sufficient time to recover after each workout. To accomplish this, it's a good idea to develop a schedule that you stick to each week.

"When targeting muscles, I like to begin my week with a leg day and finish it with a leg day," says personal trainer De Bolton. "I like to split my leg days up with upper-body days in between." So a typical week may look like this:

• ​Monday:​ leg day
• ​Tuesday:​ upper-body workout
• ​Wednesday:​ conditioning or rest day
• ​Thursday:​ upper-body workout
• ​Friday:​ leg day
• ​Saturday:​ conditioning and cardio
• ​Sunday:​ rest day
  

If you plan on doing two leg-day workouts per week, it would be effective to split up your training even further: one day for glutes and hamstrings and another day for quads. That way you can have intense and heavy training for each day and get a full recovery before the next leg workout.

Another (more beginner-friendly) way to split up your training with just one leg day may look like this:

• ​Monday:​ leg day
• ​Tuesday:​ cardio
• ​Wednesday:​ upper-body workout
• ​Thursday:​ cardio
• ​Friday:​ full-body workout
• ​Saturday:​ rest day
• ​Sunday:​ rest day

"But make sure if you are lifting heavy that you don't hit the same muscle group day after day," Bolton says. "You can cause muscle fatigue or overtrain, which will cause other setbacks that will not help you reach your goal."

​Read more:​ The Best Strength-Training Exercises for Weight Loss

"With my personal-training clients as well as my athletes, I usually have them train the legs to some degree every day," says personal trainer Travis Barrett. Some of the best exercises to include in these types of workouts include:

​Move 1: Vertical Jump​

These jumps address speed and your ability to produce force with no external load and to do so quickly. These are typically used as our initial power exercise following a dynamic warmup.

1. Squat down halfway with your feet flat.
2. Jump as high as possible.
3. Land on flat feet with knees slightly bent to absorb some of the impact.

​Move 2: Hang Clean High Pull​

This advanced movement is a power exercise (in particular, speed and strength) that addresses your ability to produce large amounts of force in a very short amount of time. Practice nailing the form first before progressing with weight.

1. Start with a loaded (unloaded if you've never done this move before) barbell in front of you.
2. Lift the barbell to hip-height with back flat and knees slightly bent.
3. Bend your knees and reach your hips back in order to load the hamstrings.
4. Straighten up explosively as you use the force of the movement to raise the bar up the body to chest level. Your elbows should be higher than your wrists.
5. Bend knees slightly to absorb the impact of the barbell on the way down.

​Move 3: Front Squat​

This is a basic strength exercise that focuses on general leg strength. It also works your core, as it forces you to stay more upright as compared to a back squat.

1. Grab a barbell or set of dumbbells and hold across the chest. (The bar should rest across the front deltoids with the triceps parallel to the floor.)
2. Keep your hands and wrists relaxed.
3. Hinge your hips back into a squat, pause for one count, and then stand back up.

​Move 4: Glute Bridge​

It's common for many of us to have weak posterior chains, the group of muscles on the back of the body. This body-weight exercise helps address that by strengthening your hamstrings and glutes.

1. Lie on your back with your knees bent and pointing up to the ceiling.
2. Squeeze your glutes and press through your heels to lift your hips slowly until your body is in a straight line from shoulders to knees.
3. Lower back down slowly and with control, keeping your glutes engaged throughout the movement.
   

​Move 5: Body-Weight Lunge​

This exercise addresses single-leg strength, which helps ensure that one side isn't stronger than the other.

1. Start standing.
2. Step forward a few feet with the lead foot flat.
3. Bend both knees to 90-degree angles.
4. Maintain even pressure between the ball of the rear foot and the middle of the front foot.
5. Step back to the starting position.

​Read more:​ How to Get Lean, Sexy Legs With 12 Moves

There are various ways to structure a workout when your goal is increasing muscle size (called hypertrophy). You can go up in weights, you could perform exercises in supersets (grouping two moves together sequentially with little to no rest in between) or you could try triple sets (three exercises executed sequentially with little no rest in between sets). You can get a lot done in little time!

Circuits are also a great way to challenge yourself. You can either do a continual circuit where you're moving from one exercise to the next without rest until the end or use supersets or triple sets, in which you group two or three exercises together with little rest in between exercise and a break between sets.

Not sure what to do for your next leg-day workout? Try this workout from Barrett:

• Vertical jumps: 5 sets of 3 reps
  
• Hang clean high pull: 3 sets of 3 reps at 60 percent of your 1-rep max*
  
• Front squat: 3 sets of 5 reps at 75 percent of your 1-rep max
  
• Glute bridge: 3 sets of 20
  
• Body-weight lunge: 3 sets of 10 reps on each side
  

*One-rep max refers to the maximum amount of weight you can lift once.