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Leg Day: The Surprising Metabolic Booster for Women's Fitness

• Ahna Fulmer

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Unlock the secret to a supercharged metabolism with the power of leg day! Could skipping leg workouts be holding you back from your fitness goals? We promise you'll gain insights into how focusing on strength training, especially for women, can transform not only your body but also your health and well-being. By embracing the often-overlooked lower body routine, you'll discover how the glutes, quadriceps, and hamstrings can impact everything from vascular health to reducing injury risks.

Our podcast episode delves into compelling research from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning, showcasing how intensive leg exercises can unexpectedly boost upper body strength by up to 15%. Imagine you're a runner or someone merely aiming to maintain an active lifestyle; prioritizing leg workouts could be your game-changer. We'll dispel myths about getting "bulky" and guide you with actionable tips on maximizing results through progressive weight increases and proper form, all while emphasizing the surprising interconnectedness of leg day, back health, and overall function.

From the science of high-volume leg training to optimizing your protein intake, we explore the nuances that make leg day essential for anyone striving for improved metabolic performance and muscle growth. Whether you're interested in the art of balancing cholesterol or finding motivation through a blend of fitness and spiritual well-being, our discussion will inspire you. Embrace the challenge and rewards of leg day, as we share a reflective perspective on how investing in your health can uplift not only yourself but also those around you.

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Speaker 1:

Muscle burns more than fat. Glute muscles, quadriceps, hamstrings are the largest muscle groups in the human body. Opportunity to get the most bang for our buck in terms of metabolic supercharging for our time. Hi, ladies, rising stars, welcome those of you who are in the new member community, the six-week program, those of you who are in the rising stars membership and anyone who is listening later via the replay so glad to have you here. Today we're going to chat a women's fitness hack how to supercharge your metabolism with leg day. You've probably seen the hashtags, the Pinterest pins, the Instagram posts hashtag don't skip leg day. But what you may not know is why and then how to actually leverage your leg day workout to, in fact, supercharge your metabolism. So today we're going to talk about how leg day can boost your metabolism and accelerate your fitness goals, to supercharge that workout, to help you burn fuel more efficiently and actually boost your metabolism, prevent disease and help you live strong and prevent injury as well. So the first thing that we need to understand is when people say don't skip leg day, when posts that you read talk about the importance of leg day, when we are talking about muscle strength training and the importance of it, one of the key concepts to understand as it relates to our metabolism is that at rest, muscle burns more than fat. There's multiple different numbers into how much more that it burns, but suffice it to say it is a better, more efficient use of the fuel that you put into your body than fat. Add to that the fact that replacing external fat which is not the only thing that we're talking about here when we talk about replacing disease-inducing fat tissue with lean, mean calorie-burning muscle tissue what we are also talking about is the fat within our bodies. This is where we talk about vascular health. This is never talked about as much, and so we always externalize it. But the reason that we want to strength train, as it concerns our metabolism and boosting it and becoming better, more efficient burners of the calories that we consume, is because it is also changing the composition inside our bodies, specifically our vasculature, which is the primary leading cause of stroke and heart disease, some of the most prominent killers, especially here in the United States. Number one muscle burns more than fat, especially here in the United States. Number one muscle burns more than fat. Number two the reason that we want to in fact increase our muscle mass and boost our metabolism is to improve not just the external body composition but our internal body composition, which involves vascular health. So where does leg day come into this? Well, the important thing to understand about the physiology of the muscle in our body is that the lower body that's from the belly button down, so we're talking glute muscles, quadriceps, hamstrings are the largest muscle groups in the human body. So not only if we neglect these muscles can we lead to imbalances, weakness, but we are also missing an opportunity to get the most bang for our buck in terms of metabolic supercharging for our time. This is why there's been a massive shift in the industry from just cardio to strength training, especially a day dedicated to legs, because from the belly button down, it compromises a significant portion of our muscle mass. So you get the most bang for your buck strictly as it concerns metabolic improvement due to muscle hypertrophy.

Speaker 1:

Here's the interesting thing Per stats, 60% of adults do not engage in regular lower body strength training 60%. So we know that those of you women that are here, you are, if you are at least doing the workouts. In the early morning habit program. We have leg day on Friday. This is true of a lot of workout programs. If you are in a workout program, hopefully they have a day dedicated to leg strength, but if not, then you definitely want to either be doing our workouts or finding one that is dedicating workouts to your legs.

Speaker 1:

There was a research published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning that suggested that high volume, lower body workouts can actually increase upper body strength by 10 to 15%. And actually increase upper body strength by 10 to 15%, and this increase is linked to elevated levels of muscle building hormones. Because you're building such a massive amount of muscles when you prioritize legs, so those intense leg exercises, the suggestion is that it's actually stimulating growth hormone testosterone because of the surge in building the leg muscle and so, um, you're actually building other musculature in your body, sort of by default. Prioritizing leg day is going to help prevent injury and improve functional movement. Right, this is the functional. So we talked a little bit about boosting metabolic health, but we also want to talk about just functionality. Why do I exercise? It's because, frankly, I want to be able to still go out and shoot hoops with my son in 10 years. I want to be able to keep up with my grandkids one day. Right, I want to be able to function. So strong leg muscles are going to be vital for maintaining proper form, bearing functional movements.

Speaker 1:

For those of you that struggle with feeling burnout from fitness, I have talked to many, many women that are just burnt out from exercise. There's a lot of reasons for this. We pull back a lot of layers in early morning habit. As to why some of that occurs, why we're burnt out, why we're so exhausted as women, suffice it to say. A lot of it is because too much of exercise has been externalized instead of made functional. But this is something to encourage you when we talk about leg day and helping to motivate you that we're not just doing squats to have a rounder booty in your workout shorts, to have a rounder booty in your workout shorts. Some of you might be going for that aesthetic and that is fine, but don't miss the fact that if you continually do squats and have really good form, you are less likely to injure your back when you pick up a kid off the floor or lunges. Lifting, pulling, working all of these muscles are also going to help prevent injury and promote a higher quality of life. So functionality is essential and, in fact, strength in strengthening lower body can actually decrease injury risk by 30 to 50% percent. That's huge.

Speaker 1:

Another study showed that lower limb exercise significantly enhanced running capability. I mean, that's not a shocker. Knee extension, strength, running gait. Those of you that are runners if you have not been around here for a long time, you have heard me talk about this. Runners should not just be running. You need to be lifting weights, you need to be strengthening, you need to be cross-training. You want to be a better runner. You might actually need to run less. So, especially if you have lower chronic back pain and you're a runner, there is a lot of research to suggest that you should be prioritizing lower body weight training. Don't skip leg day. Even if you're a runner, you might actually find that you run better.

Speaker 1:

So boosting metabolism and burning calories incorporating these leg exercises into your routine we talked about it can greatly increase caloric expenditure, not just at rest, as we replace um fat tissue with muscle tissue or we just build muscle tissue right, we hypertrophy those muscles is going to help increase your metabolic performance at rest, but it also, because of the amount of muscle mass of your lower body, will actually help you burn more during your exercise. Research um indicated that larger muscle groups burn more calories. This is specifically I'm quoting it from an article from I can't even pronounce this right by Chester gym, but it suggested up to three times more for a heavy leg day workout during and after exercise, due to the higher oxygen and fuel demands for these larger muscle groups. And then, additionally, compound exercises like squats and deadlifts can also elevate your metabolic rate for up to 48 hours post the workout, the suggestion being you're going to continue to burn a higher level of calories even for two days after you've left the gym, or your home gym, in my case, for most of us. So what are tips?

Speaker 1:

If you are going to prioritize a leg day, what are tips to maximize that workout? Well, number one don't skip leg day. So I think, okay, ana, we've got that memo, okay. But here's the difference a lot of workouts will have leg exercises in them, and there's a lot of people confusing that for leg day. Well, I do lift my legs. No, you're doing a combined full body workout that includes leg exercises. That's not the same as a dedicated leg day.

Speaker 1:

For example, for those of us in the early morning habit community, for the new member of us in the early morning habit community, for the new member, the six week program members. You guys are having four weeks of no weights and that's a whole nother training. We'll talk about the importance of resetting, but eventually the goal is to incorporate weight. So I also want to encourage those of you who are new members and you're like well, wait a second for four weeks in your program we're not doing weights. There's a lot of good reasons for that. I talk about that in the app, why that is essential to do and to reset. But the long-term goal is to incorporate weights. But what you've already seen is that we have a full body strength day and then we have a dedicated upper body and a dedicated lower body. There are three different days. The point that I am making here is that when you cram a full body strength workout into a 30 minute block, you are getting a fraction of the leg muscle workout, as you do for a dedicated leg day workout.

Speaker 1:

A pushback that I have gotten before from clients when I used to coach in fitness and nutrition specifically would say I don't want to get bulky really quick. Let me address this First of all. Muscle is, by definition, lean. There is no such thing as bulky muscle or lean muscle. Muscle tissue, by definition, is lean period. It takes so much work to bulk muscle to the degree that a lot of women are concerned about bulking. You're not going to bulk by looking at a weight, okay. Sometimes I think women are so scared if they start lifting weights that they're going to get bulky, and they don't want that bulky look. Muscle tissue is lean In order to get bulky. It takes a ton of work.

Speaker 1:

So the key here is understanding why we're, why we're strength training, that muscle tissue by definition is lean and if you end up bulking in a way that you don't like, some of that is just genetic. Some of the way that people put on muscle tissue is different. It is why there are some people who don't ever lift and look muscular. It's genetics. On the flip side, there are people who lift regularly and don't have the same muscle definition, even if their body composition is the same as someone else's. Some of it is genetics. So also give yourself permission again. Try to like, deconstruct the external element as best you can, but don't be scared of the bulking. It actually is very difficult to do, and we're also going to give you another tip how to best fuel muscle properly and healthily.

Speaker 1:

But number one don't skip leg day. You need to have a dedicated 30 minute workout to the lower body. Number two tip number two to maximize leg day is to maintain proper form. This seems really simple, but here's what I mean by this. With tip number two, I meant to add we want to increase weight, so I did this backwards so you could put tip number two is to increase your, your weight that you're using, or maintain proper form. Either one they're, they're a sandwich together, and here's what I mean by this. What you need to be careful of is when people say, increase your weight. If you are increasing the weight on a foundation of improper form, you are setting yourself for setting yourself up for injury.

Speaker 1:

The other thing that I have seen people do in the spirit of efficiency is create too many compound moves with leg workouts, meaning you're trying to get more bang for your buck. So when you do a lunge, you also do a bicep curl, right? Like we've all seen these concepts or these compound moves, you do a lunge while you do a bicep curl, or you do a squat while you do a side raise. There's two issues with this one for myself personally and for most of us the weight that I require to hypertrophy, um, my shoulders with side raises is significantly less than the weight that I require to hypertrophy my leg muscle. So the problem with these moves is that you're not actually maximizing your time for your muscle.

Speaker 1:

So if you are in a workout program and even you know we use the mad fit library, she does this sometimes too. A lot of people do it and I understand the reason behind it. We're trying to like work smarter, not harder, and I understand that. But sometimes it can actually be a detriment to separate them. That means, instead of doing the lunge with the bicep curl, you do the bicep curls and then you switch weights and you do the lunges, pull them apart. Maybe you do less reps because you still want to maintain the same time you increase your weight. Does that make sense what I'm saying? So if you do 15 lunges with bicep curls let's say that's the move the fitness instructor is giving you then you pull them apart and maybe you're doing let's say you're doing two rounds of them, then the one round you do a full weighted. Maybe you actually stress yourself and you do 15 pounds instead of 10 for the bicep curls and you go heavy on bicep curls because you're only going to get 15 of them in. And then the second time you do that set, you just do the lunges and you go up a weight in the lunge weight. Maybe you normally do 20, this time do 25 because you're doing less reps. But this way you can focus on form and function and still maximize your time for muscle.

Speaker 1:

That being said, on leg day in general, you just want to constantly think can I increase my weight? I am guilty of this, especially when we talk about early morning habit and we're trying to get our workout done first thing. For some of us, that's before our kids get up, right Like my brain is still barely awake. So sometimes I just go on autopilot and I grab weights and it's like, oh, these are actually too light. But I don't feel like walking the extra five steps to actually change the weights Right, so I just do the workout, try to pause and be mindful Am I actually dressing the muscle here? Do I feel this burn? If not, you might need to go up in weight.

Speaker 1:

So challenge yourself with your weights, but make sure you never sacrifice your form. That's tip number two increase your weight, do not sacrifice your form. If your form is not good, you are ultimately setting yourself up for injury. Lastly, tip number three is you have to fuel this muscle hypertrophy. What you are doing when you increase your weight this Friday, when you have leg day and you remember what we talked about here and you think, okay, right, I need to increase my weight a little bit, I'm going to maintain proper form, I'm going to pull apart compound moves so that I'm really, really stressing those leg muscles to get the bang for my buck time for muscle.

Speaker 1:

How then do I fuel that muscle growth optimally? That is where protein comes in. Now we're going to do a lot more trainings on protein. There's a lot to talk about with protein. There's a lot to talk about with nutritional profiles and helping fuel your workout. Well, because we want to move smarter, not harder. But when it comes to specifically on leg day and fueling this massive amount of muscle, you want lean protein. What does lean mean and who cares? Well, again, we just talked about one of the points of building muscle is to boost metabolism, prevent disease by promoting vascular health.

Speaker 1:

When we talk about transforming the inside body composition as well, we want to consider our vasculature, which directly relates to our cholesterol panels, the cholesterol profiles within our blood that is constantly streaming through our vasculature, primarily our arteries. Lean protein, generally speaking. The lean is talking about the saturated fat and many of you can picture it lean beef versus full fat beef when you cook it and you strain it. If you've never done it, I encourage you to do it. It's very enlightening. What is ultimately congealing that saturated. That's that and, believe it or not, that is precisely what it looks like in the blood as well.

Speaker 1:

I had a patient one time in emergency medicine. She had a genetic dyslipidemia that's a fancy word for saying she had a genetically messed up cholesterol panel. You would have never known by looking at her. Her cholesterol was so high. This has happened one time in a 10 year career. I'd never seen it before since it was so high that when I threw blood from her and the nurse came out and showed me her blood in the tube from her and the nurse came out and showed me her blood in the tube, the fat, just like would come off of meat, had actually filtered its way up to the top of the tube and separated itself from her blood because it was so high. So there was like the red blood cells at the bottom, like normal blood and then it looked just like you would see in a cool whip container that your grandma used to drain her beef fat into and keep in the fridge. I could never figure out why my grandma did that and that was sitting at the top of her blood. So this is what is being streamed through the bloodstream now.

Speaker 1:

For some people, that's a bigger deal than others. This is why you've got to know your risk factors and understand fat. So there's also then salmon. There's eggs, also very high in fat. The difference is it is the omega fatty acids and this is the fat that fuels our good cholesterol, which is called HDL. That saturated fat is what is going to elevate our bad cholesterol, which is called LDL. Now we're not even talking carbs here. We're not even touching that right now. To be very clear, there's been a large misconception about carbs over the years. Thank goodness, we're getting more clarity on that. Carbs also contribute to fat. I'm not saying fat alone. That is a misnomer that many of us grew up with. Right, I grew up on skim milk, terrible, horrible white water. Um, we understand now. Fat is not the only thing contributing to our body. Fat and carbs play a large role in it. But right now I'm just talking about that, I'm sorry protein. So the bottom line is, when we talk about most ideally fueling our bodies, we are talking about lower saturated fat content.

Speaker 1:

Protein. This would include sorry, my husband's calling me, I'm going to mute this for a second there we go. This would include stuff like lean beef. If you're going to go for red meat, try to eat it sparingly. Go for lean beef. Pork chops Be careful with pork. Depends on what part of the pig you're getting. But pork tenderloin I'm sorry, not pork chops, pork tenderloin. It would include chicken. Turkey Eggs are acceptable. It would include venison. It would include um, what was the one I just blanked on? I had another one. I'm blanking on it. Um, be careful of lamb. Lamb is higher in saturated fat. Many of the fishes, cod yeah, blanking on the rest of them. But those are all examples of lean protein. I'm like distracted by the call that I just got. Sorry, guys, this can be edited later, except for those of you watching via replay tomorrow.

Speaker 1:

So lean protein, lean protein is what we want to fuel that muscle tissue. Protein is literally the foundation of all the tissue in our body. We'll talk more about protein, but for the sake of leg day. You want to make sure that Friday night, for example, you really want to take this to the next level, that you are even more honed in on that simply lean supper right, that simply lean supper. That we're talking about those higher protein meals. It is for this reason we are helping to fuel this muscle build for lunch right after your Friday workout. If you eat breakfast, keep it higher in protein on those days.

Speaker 1:

I would love to hear your thoughts, questions about leg day, questions about fueling with protein, anything that I just said, or insights. I would love to hear your thoughts. Let me pray us out, pray over our legs, our bodies, backs no joke, no joke. Let me pray, lord, thank you so much for the women here.

Speaker 1:

I thank you for these women who are doing the hard work of investing in their health, because it is hard, frankly. It is hard. It is hard to prioritize our wellbeing, but I thank you for the women that are doing it. I pray perseverance for them as they invest in their health and also pray that you would give them peace as they do it, that there's freedom in it and the reason that we work out is not for tomorrow, it's for today. Tomorrow's not guaranteed. So I just thank you for the women that are striving to live well so that they can invest today, and I thank you for the way that they serve within their homes, within their communities.

Speaker 1:

I do pray for protection. Back injuries are no joke, and when we talk about leg day, they are so intricately connected. So I just pray, if anyone is suffering from injury right now, that you would help heal them and protect those of us that are doing hard things and lifting heavier weights, and I just pray that you would protect us and give people healing. Lord, we love you in Jesus name. Amen. Have an amazing week, ladies. Let's rise.

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Ahna Fulmer

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