Workout Inspiration - Tighten up your legs and bum!

Today's workout inspiration is all about the lower body.

It's one of the most important areas to focus on if your looking to lose weight and tighten everything up.

I have a love/hate relationship with the infamous 'Leg Day' - I need to motivate myself to get stuck into those squats but when I do it's so worth it! There is something so rewarding about pushing yourself to your limit and then collapsing in an accomplished ball of sweat on the floor! I love it!

One of the main reason why I love working the gluts, hamstrings and quadriceps is because they are some of the largest muscle groups in the body... Why is this relevant? Lets get a bit more technical...

• During exercise your muscles require a larger amount of oxygen than when you are at rest.

• Your breathing rate goes up as your lungs try to increase the amount of oxygen you are taking in. 

• In order to accomodate this, your cardiac output (blood-flow from your heart) increases allowing more oxygen-rich blood to travel to the muscles at work

• The more intense the exercise that you do, the more your heart rate increases and the more calories you burn.

Therefore... in order to turn your body into a fat burning machine, it is more efficient to work your larger muscle groups before focusing on the smaller ones. This means more calories are burned and you get more out of your workouts instead of focusing on fiddly isolation exercises!

Combine this theory with resistance training then you have the secret to maximise fat burning! This is because of the afterburn that occurs. When you lift weights it causes your metabolism to increase and remain in a turbocharged state for up to 48 hours after training. During cardio based exercises you burn calories during and then stop when your heart-rate returns to normal. During resistance based interval training you burn calories during the session but due to the metabolism spike, your caloric burn continues for 2 days after you finish that session - amazing!

Whats even better again is that resistance training allows you to increase your body's lean muscle mass. Muscle is a little more high maintenance than fat tissue and requires a higher level of energy in order for it to maintain itself. This means that by increasing your lean muscle mass, overall your body burns a higher level of calories throughout your general non-active daily routines.

So lets get stuck into this ladies! Here is a lower body circuit workout that incorporates resistance  training using a combination of free weights and your own body weight.

Some tips to keeping good form in this are:

• Remember to lower your bum down towards the floor with a flat back during the squat - stop when your thighs are parallel to the floor - remember to push your weight back onto your heels as you come back up!

•  The walking lunges can be done weighted or unweighted.

• If you are new to this exercise dont fret if you reach muscle failure before 30 seconds with weights, simply drop the weights and continue

• Sumo burpees are  the same as normal burpees but lower yourself into a sumo squat position by taking your legs out as wide as possible to protect your knees and turn your toes outwards. (These bad boys are the secret to blasting your inner thighs!)

• With all of these exercises the golden rule to injury prevention is to keep your knees on top of your toes. Dont let them track too far outwards over the toes as this puts too much pressure on the knee joint and can cause accelerated wear and tear - we want our knees for life remember!

This circuit is a timed one - instead of completeing a set number of repitions, I suggest trying to complete as many reps of each exercise within the time limit - this allows you to really get your heart rate up and push yourself as hard as possible for maximum metabolic burn.

Complete each exercise back to back - I recommend setting a timer on your phone so that the number-work is figured out for you! Repeat this circuit 3-4 times resting for 60 seconds in between each circuit - try to keep moving during the rest, walk around, drink some water - just dont lie there on the floor, after all we are here to WORK!!!

Also! Remember to choose a weight thats not too heavy given the high number of reps, but heavy enough to complete the full 60 seconds with good form - it is so important to maintain GOOD FORM! So if you get half way through and you start to fail dont just stop - drop the weights and keep going!

The overall goal is to reach muscle failure so that during the recovery phase after your workout - your body undergoes the changes needed in order for you to adapt to this training routine - so you get fitter, faster and stronger!

So lets get our sweat on!!


Mary

xxx