5 Simple Exercises to Tone Your Leg Muscles

In this article, we'll look at the 5 best exercises to tone and build your leg muscles and, at the same time, to improve your posture.

To emphasize the muscles in your legs, it’s obviously necessary to exercise. Plus, well-trained legs allow us to walk longer, without fatigue or discomfort (such as stiffness).

Below, we’ll tell you why it’s good to make sure you reinforce training your leg muscles with a weekly routine.

How to get toned legs

Before starting to train to build up your leg muscles, you must be aware of the effort that you’ll need. Your legs should grow in volume because of muscle gain, not fat.

To get results, you first need discipline and a diet rich in protein. This is key when it comes to exercising regularly. You must be constant and learn to increase your threshold of resistance in terms of physical effort.

Exercises for your leg muscles

1. Weighted Squats

Squats with weights are the exercise par excellence for enhancing leg muscles. Actually, they’re ideal for growing muscle in a short time and gaining strength. In this exercise, the following muscles are worked: quadriceps, buttocks, femoral muscles, adductors, calves and back.
It’s advisable that we gradually increase the weight with which we work as we progress.  Otherwise, injuries to the back and joints may occur.

To obtain good results, you should learn how to do the exercise correctly:

• Separate your feet to the same width as the shoulders.
• Contract your abdominal muscles.
• Bend your knees to lower the bar with a slight backward movement.
• Do not arch your back.

2.  Cycling

Professional cycling is one of the toughest sports in the world. In fact, at first glance, you can see the great muscles of these cyclists have, not just in volume but in strength. Therefore, cycling, in any of its variants, is a perfect way to tone and strengthen the legs.

In addition, the bicycle not only works the lower part of the body. It also strengthens the lumbar region, pectoral muscles and shoulders. At the same time, it helps to prevent bone injuries and arthritis, improves blood circulation, reduces cholesterol levels and strengthens the heart.

3. Jumping jacks

Another option with different variants are jumping jacks. They consist of jumping while moving the legs together and opening them in the air while clapping your hands above your head. It’s a very simple exercise.

To increase strength, endurance and aerobic capacity, ankle weights can be progressively used.

4.  Calf raises

To get well-defined calves, you can practice the following exercise:

• Take some dumbbells with an appropriate weight.
• Separate your legs at the same width as your shoulders.
• Lift your heels and stand on tiptoe for 25 seconds.

Perform 4 sets of 10 repetitions, and increase the weight of the dumbbells. Moderate soreness in your calves will indicate that you’re doing the exercise well.

5. Lunges

A mandatory exercise to strengthen your hips and tone the legs are lunges.

Although it seems like a simple exercise to the naked eye, it really is not. They result in a very high depletion of energy and, if they’re done with the incorrect form, they entail a certain risk of suffering a joint injury.

Lunges work several muscle groups at the same time. However, it’s important to train with different exercise variants to be able to work different parts of the body and get real results.

Some things to keep in mind

• To begin with, you must always warm up the muscles you’re going to work on. This warm up should last a minimum of 10 minutes.
• In order for the muscle to grow, stretching before and after the session is essential.
• The intensity must always be gradual. You should not work beyond our means. In fact, you can suffer serious injuries after small oversights.
• Whatever you do, do it well. Take your time, and do not rush to get immediate results. Always consult with a trainer at the gym if you have questions and, above all, be consistent.