Want Lean & Toned Legs? Read This!

Legs Not Growing? Butt not shaping up?

Here’s everything you need to know!

Every female we work with, or at least 99% of them, want leaner legs.  They want to shape their legs and have a firmer butt. When I ask what a client has previously done to shape their legs, squats and glute kickbacks is what I am normally told. Whilst these are helpful, it goes far beyond this.

So below are some things you MUST bear in mind if you want to do it properly.

You have to get used to the fact that building nice, lean, toned legs requires muscles. Doing 100 squats a day or 100 crunches a day will NOT build tone.  Toning requires muscle.  It’s the muscle, combined with lower levels of fat, that allows you to shape an area and see the tone.  

Once again, toning needs muscle.  Ladies, you do not have enough testosterone to build huge muscles. If this were the case, why am I not jacked up yet? Why don’t I have a massive bulging chest or humongous legs? So please relax, you won’t get bulky.

 
You can NOT shape an area by hammering it with rep after rep. Please remember this.  If you can’t accept this fact, then everything else below becomes irrelevant.

To build the muscle and the tone, you need to lift heavy. Our legs make up half our body.  As a result, it can handle heavy loads.  Stop watching influencers doing glute workouts where they teach you how to ‘tone’.  These guys have been training for years and have done the fundamentals.  They just want to show you the sexy stuff that sells in front of a camera. The first thing you have to do is perfect your technique and form.  Then focus on heavy squatting, lunges, step ups, weighted hip thrusts, Romanian deadlifts, leg presses etc – you get the idea. You must expose your muscles to heavy load.  When you do this, the muscle breaks down.  By then feeding it, you repair, it slowly grows and gets stronger.  

Over time, this will tighten your skin and as body fat drops off, it will “tone” your body. Yes folks, heavy lifting gives you tone!! If you don’t have weights, find household objects you can use and hold it.  Water jugs, bags of atta, backpacks full of books… get creative guys!

What about reps? Mix these up. Anywhere between 8-15 reps will do.  Nothing magical here.
 

Keep a log. In order to change your body and get it to grow, it needs overload. How can you do this? By writing down what you did, and then besting your efforts in the next workouts.  Going into the gym blindly without a plan is a sure-fire way to fail.  I guarantee that. Without knowing what you did last week, you won’t be progressing.

 
Lower body fat if you want to see the tone. Like I said above, at the end of the day, you will need to lower body fat gradually.  Whilst building muscle and losing fat is hard to do at the same time, it certainly isn’t hard for newbies.  So, if you have no real prior experience with lifting, you will benefit far more here. Please also note, by doing 100 reps on an area, you are not melting the fat.
 

Eat more protein and clean up your diet.  Well without enough protein and proper food, you can’t expect to shape your body up.  That’s a given.  Don’t want to count calories? No worries.  Just double up on your protein, because chances are, you aren’t eating enough as it is.  A very common issue with ladies. By tidying up your diet, calories will be respected anyway.
 

Don’t be fancy. You do not need 10 different angles to work your glutes. You don’t have to do glute kickbacks with fancy bands.  They can help, but they will only get you so far because the resistance won’t be that high.
 

Sleep and recovery. Don’t forget, the legs and glutes are muscles at the end of the day.  They need recovery.  So please don’t neglect your sleep.
 

Technique, form and execution! The big one. Squatting is more quad (front of the thigh) dominant. It’s not the best way to hit the butt.  Hamstring curls hit the hamstrings (back of the thigh), they don’t hit the front of the thighs.  So whenever you do an exercise, make sure you use correct form so that the muscles that are the intended target ACTUALLY DO THE WORK! This is such a common mistake people make.  We all have dominant areas.  I have very weak hamstrings.  So when I squat, they don’t do much work.  So I focus instead on squeezing them consciously and doing other targeted work.  So make sure you focus on an imbalance by giving it attention.