Leg exercises are excellent because not only do they make your legs look toned and beautiful, they improve your overall body fitness and flexibility. However, overdoing leg exercises isn’t recommended as it can put too much stress on the legs. Many people perform leg workouts 3 times a week — but is that too much?
Working out legs 3 times a week isn’t too much and it’s safe. If you’re a beginner, start with an hour or two of leg workouts a day first, then you can eventually add more hours later on once your body gets used to the exercises. Refrain from leg exercises if you’re injured, sick, or overly tired.
The rest of this article will discuss leg workouts, how much time you should spend on them a week, and what types of leg workouts will be best for your body goals.
Diversify Your Leg Workouts for Best Results
Cyclists and tennis players often have toned, robust legs due to their heavy reliance on their legs to perform the sports. By keeping those legs active, these athletes strengthen their muscles and increase speed and stability. Of course, there won’t be much progress on one’s leg performance over time if they get accustomed to the same motions.
To improve your leg performance, you need to spice things up — don’t stick to the same routines. Exercise your legs in a variety of ways. By giving your legs different leg workouts every week, you can train your legs longer, as many as 3 times a week.
However, you may want to spend fewer hours on your leg workouts if you’re a beginner. You can exercise your legs for 30 minutes a day first and increase your hours later on once your legs have developed more flexibility. You know your legs are more flexible when you can exercise them longer comfortably.
Leg workouts are just as important as workouts for other parts of the body. You don’t want to overload your body, but you also don’t want to skip a leg workout day. Leg workouts can reduce your risks of leg diseases and increase your flexibility, essential for injury prevention.
Leg Exercises Can Promote Better Health
Researchers found that fast-paced, high-interval training can improve people’s metabolic health and reduce their risks of experiencing severe ailments. However, interval training isn’t easy as it reduces workout time, which many people find challenging. That said, take your time when working out your legs — no need to train them vigorously.
Start with leg exercises like walking and jogging first. Swimming is also great for the legs as it helps strengthen the bones. Leg workouts such as foot stomps, squats, and hip leg lifts can help those with osteoporosis build stronger bones.
Leg Workouts Can Accelerate Weight Loss
Specific workouts target certain areas of the body — leg workouts target the legs. When you perform exercises that use much leg power, you train your legs to build more muscles, hence stronger legs. Building those muscles takes a lot of energy, so fat is burned in the process.
When your body uses more energy, your metabolism increases, causing your body to burn fat. Over time, your legs will become firm and strong. You don’t want to overdo your legs, though, if you want to avoid bulky legs, so you want to maintain high reps (15 is good) per set.
Regular Leg Training Can Prevent Leg Injuries
Leg injuries can happen when you do high-intensity level activities without proper warmups. Even a 10-minute leg warmup is considered a leg workout. That said, don’t skip those leg workouts.
Stretching is an excellent way to warm up your legs. That way, you won’t put too much stress on your legs and risk injuring them during your workouts, especially over prolonged periods. Once you’ve developed more robust and more flexible legs, you can work out longer and achieve better leg performance to suit your active lifestyle.
Don’t Overdo Your Leg Exercises
Like other types of exercise, you don’t want to overdo your leg workout. Instead of running on treadmills only, why not run at your local parks too? Rather than focusing on only gym workouts, combine different routines, like swimming, cycling, or tennis, with your gym workouts.
Do deadlifts, squats, and lunges to work on your glutes and quadriceps muscles. These exercises can improve your leg performance. Alternatively, you can also do sports like football and basketball.
Many men do resistance training to increase their leg strength. Exercise can be done using weight machines commonly found at the gym or free weights (dumbbells, kettlebells, barbells, etc.). Other great resistance exercises are squats, lunges, and leg curls.
How Often Is Ideal For Leg Training?
It’ll help if you commit to your leg routines to get the results you want. Of course, different people have different goals. Overtraining isn’t recommended, especially for beginners, but ideally, you should have 3 times a week leg workout.
Squats are great for toning the lower body and improving leg strength. Don’t work on your squats too much if you don’t want your legs to appear big. Initially, 3 sets of 15 reps of squats would be great for a beginner and can be done 3 times a week.
Lunges are great for improving leg strength and stability since the exercise makes you stand on one leg for a short time. Like squats, doing lunges 3 times a week would be great. If you’re new to lunges, consider performing 12 lunges per leg at a time.
You can improve your running by adding leg curls to your weekly leg workout. Leg curls will strengthen your hamstring and prevent injuries from running. Doing leg curls 2-3 times a week for four weeks can promote stagnant fiber growth.
Add Curls and Squats to Your Routine To Build Strength
There are various leg exercises to accommodate the type of goals you have for your legs. Many of these exercises are suitable for both men and women. Below are workouts to consider in your leg workout:
- Bicep curls. You can do this exercise using dumbbells or a resistance band in a sitting or standing position. 2 sets of 12 reps a day would be great to improve bone strength.
- Hamstring curls. This standing exercise can increase muscle strength in the back of your upper legs. 12 reps of hamstring curls per leg a day would be great and can be done 3 days a week.
- Squats. There’s no magic number for doing squats, and you can do them as many times as you like to achieve beautiful, toned legs and butt. If you don’t want your legs to be too bulky, 3 sets of 15 reps of squats done 3 times a week will do.
Workout Splits Help You Target Different Muscles
It would be great to have workout splits to help you keep track of your exercise routines. Workout splits for men and women aren’t much different. Likewise, 3 times a week of leg workouts would be great, but how many hours of leg workouts you’re willing to put into per day is entirely up to you.
You must have a workout split so that you know what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Whether you’re trying to burn fat, build muscles, or increase leg strength, you must form a workout split that works for you. Usually, a workout split covers exercise targeting specific areas of the body, but for the sake of this article, let’s explore a workout split mainly for your leg workout.
| Leg Day | Workout Split for Men | Workout Split for Women |
| Monday | Spin bike, walking lunges, squat jumps, hamstring curl, Bulgarian low/high split squat, and hip band ladder finish | Home exercise: single-leg Romanian deadlift, squat, calf raise, box jump, crab walk, and walking lunge |
| Wednesday | Dumbbell Romanian deadlift, leg press, barbell squat, barbell hip thrust, and dumbbell TKE drop lunge. | Machine leg day: spin bike, hack squat, leg press, hamstring curl, leg extensions, glute bridge and hamstring curl |
| Friday | Barbell squats, jump squats, goblet squat, quad extension, walking lounges and weighted adductor goblet squat | Barbell deadlift, goblet squat, leg extensions, glute bridge, hamstring curl (with a gym ball) |
Final Thoughts
Working out legs 3 times a week isn’t too much. It’s safe to exercise your quads, hamstrings, calves, and glutes 3 times a week, but you don’t want to overdo your exercises or do high-intensity interval leg training if you’re still a beginner.
The more leg days you invest into, the better your legs perform. You can always add more time to your workout session as you progress and do more intense leg workouts. A workout split will come in handy to help you achieve your workout goals.
Battle-tested Gear/Accesories/Equipment For Leg Workout
I Advise You To Read More About Strength Training
- Is Working Out Legs Once a Week Enough?
- Do I Need to Lift Heavy to Get Ripped?
- Can I Workout the Same Muscle Twice a Day?
- Building Lean Muscle For Females – Everything you need to know
- How to lift HEAVY without a SPOTTER?
- How To Increase Strength To Lift More Weight?
- Bulky Body vs Lean Body Which Is Better?