Thursday, 11 October 2012 13:18

Keep your legs young

There is an old Chinese saying "Ren lao xian lao tui". Loosely translated into English, this means that the legs are the first to go when a person starts to "age". And I don't mean simply getting on in years - I mean "age", as in starting to wither away, suffer ill health, etc etc. 

This saying has been around for a while, and with good reason. Weak legs are a sure sign of not just being unfit - but also that a person is not in the best of health - perhaps older than his age otherwise might indicate. The day you start to have trouble climbing a flight of stairs, or walking a mile or so to the nearby store (and back) is the day you might want to sit back and take a good, long look at your health and overall fitness levels.

And, whats sad is that the majority of the people today don't train their legs with near enough seriousness as they should. This holds true for most gym goers as well - most folks in the gym are upper body crazy, but when it comes to train their legs, they're suddenly nowhere to be seen.

Not good - both from a health standpoint as well as aesthetic.

Look, if your a serious trainee (and that includes you guys that lift weights), then you simply MUST train your legs! Along with the neck and back (especially lower back) region, legs are an absolute MUST to train. In fact, a good leg and back workout is often better than hours of "focusing on the pectorals with the pec deck", or doing exercises for the "show muscles" (such as biceps). The reasons behind this are many, too many to list here, but the first is simply to keep your entire body young - as the Chinese say, keep the legs young, and the body follows suit.

Another reason is that working the legs HARD is one of the hidden (though it shouldn't be) keys to REAL strength, health and fitness levels. The legs of the muscles are the largest in the body, and working the legs hard results in a release of growth hormones all throughout the body - as well as ramps up your all important caridovascular system.

The result? Huge increases in overall strength, and less overall fat levels - can't beat that, me thinks.

And it's not as hard to train the legs as you might think. Walking is a fantastic, but overlooked exercise for the legs - and one you need to include in your daily routine somehow. And if you have hills in your area, walk the heck out of them - thats a workout all by itself!

Jumping rope is another excellent, but often ignored leg exercise. Part of the reasons combat athletes such as boxers have such high stamina levels is their jump rope routines, which often consist of thousands of reps daily. And we don't see many fat boxers around at a professional level, do we?

Leg training is the first chapter in the exercises part of Fast and Furious Fitness, and rightfully so. I speak about leg training in detail there, and also give you a REAL LIFE example of what happened when I started to include hill training into my daily routine in China - be sure and grab your copy NOW to read all about that.

So, moral of the story? Work the legs regularly, and work them hard - the hard work required is well worth it at the end of the day!

Best regards,

Rahul

PS: Yes, leg workouts can literally tax the entire body like it's never been taxed before. To learn how, click on over to Fast and Furious Fitness NOW.