Nancy Onyett, FNP-C

Shapely Beautiful Legs

Training legs is not only exhaustive and painful but the results are amazing over time with constant change in exercises performed. Slowly, leg definition develops that gives a flowing physique and tight hips. At present, my training emphasis is all compound moves upper and lower body throughout the winter until spring. Light weight does nothing for shaping or fitness in women; a concept that many women refuse to believe.

 Slowly, my weight in squats has been climbing each week  to achieve my goals of improved outer sweep in the quadriceps along with improved hamstring/glute tie-in with definition. So far I have been keeping my weight at 151 by clean food intake and alternating days of cardio. I found that I can squat the same amount of weight at 151 as I did at 185 so there is no need to be bulky with added weight to lose in the spring for contest preparation.

Last night's session :

Leg extensions set of 4 x 15

40, 60, 80, 100

Leg curls set of 4 x 15

40, 60, 80, 90

After warmup squats were alternated with wide stance and narrow stance squatting below parallel.

 135 x 8 x 2 sets

145 x 8 x 2 sets

155 x 8 x 2 sets

165 x 8 x 2 sets

175 x8 x 2 sets

Glute kickbacks 4 sets of 10

80, 90, 110, 120

I am happy with this training session as I increased my squat weight by 10# this week. Training is a triangle of balance to achieve with the right trainer.

Happy Days!

Tight Glutes to Sexy Legs.

Over the years as a bodybuilder I have trained many people who just want to change their physique to be more attractive. What doesn't surprise me is the responses of women "oh, I can't lift heavy weights", "I will get hair on my face", or "no, I can't do those squats". Men are let's do what I have to do to change the way I look. I find men easier to work with partly due to their male drive and their open-minded thinking for weight lifting.

Basically, it is not sex specific as to the work needed to be done to shape the legs and glutes. Often, I see these trainers in upscale gyms with their clients doing light weights or machines while they are texting or looking around the gym. Forget it, as a customer you will never benefits from that type of training. Training your glutes, hamstrings and quads requires trust, open-mindedness, and willingness to take that extra step to change by doing the work and maintaining a clean diet.

Glutes, quads, and hamstrings reguire basic exercises such as deep below parallel squats with working weight gradually adding more weight to get the effectiveness from the exercise. Glutes should be narrow, tight, and slightly humped so when one turns sideways there is that perfect concave glute looking flexed. The hamstring development when achieved is tied in at the gluteus muscle and extends in the back of the leg so when the person starts to sit there is a perfection in appearance of the hamstring. Quads should have an outer sweep as they travel up the leg with splitting for the three vastus muscle groups and lastly the teardrop muscle that sits on inside of the leg connecting to the vastus group should be separated.

The only way to achieve development in these muscle groups is to incorporate conditioning for heavy compound moves such as variances in deep squats with leg stances and dead lifts. See my blogs under Dead Lifts, Glutes Hamstrings Training, and Beautiful Shapely Legs.