Best Exercises to Tone the Legs

Leg Exercises You Need to be Doing

If you’re looking to create an effective workout program, you need to make sure that you’re always including effective leg exercises into your workout routine.  The legs are an often overlooked body part by many women as they instead turn their focus strictly to upper body strengthening exercises along with plenty of cardio training.

While the cardio will help slightly to provide some leg strengthening benefits, it won’t do the trick like the following leg toning exercises.

These will not only help to increase your overall strength level, but they’ll also help to create thinner and more toned legs – the look that most women are after.

Let’s have a quick peak at what I consider to be some of the best exercises to tone your legs.

Squats

The first of the best exercise to tone legs is the squat.  Squats are one of the most well known movements for leg toning benefits and for good reason – they work.

Squats are great since they’re a fantastic exercise to help firm the glutes, hamstrings, and quads, and will also call all the core muscles into play as well.

Make sure that when you perform the squat that you do go all the way down as low as possible however, as this is what will allow you to reap all the main benefits that they provide.

• http://videos.askthetrainer.com/squats.html

Step-Ups

Second, another of the key movements that you’ll want to do as you seek out the best exercise to tone legs is step-ups.

Step-ups work all the same muscle groups as the squats do, but since they will hit the muscles from a slightly different angle, they’re going to help to take your results a little further.

In the best case scenario you would alternate between squats and step-ups from workout to workout as that will ensure that your body never gets too comfortable in the exercises that you’re performing.

• http://videos.askthetrainer.com/dumbbell-step-ups.html

Wall Squat

The third movement that will be a must have in your lower body workout routine is the wall squat.  The wall squat is good for those who are looking to boost their lower body muscle endurance since you’re going to be required to hold the position for a set period of time.

Wall squats would be classified as an isometric contraction exercise and most often will be performed without weights.

If you like though, you can place an exercise ball between you and the wall to increase the intensity of this movement just a little bit more.

• http://videos.askthetrainer.com/stability-ball-squats.html

Lunges & Reverse Lunges

Finally, the last of the best exercise to tone legs movements to try out is the reverse lunge. While regular lunges are definitely a good choice as well, the nice thing with the reverse lunge is that since the movement pattern is so unknown, your core is going to work very hard to keep the body in balance.

This means that you’ll not only get a great lower body workout, but a very good core workout as well.

Try and included two of these in each workout you do and it won’t be long before you’re noticing great changes in your lower body.

• https://www.askthetrainer.com/lunge-exercise/

WARNING!
If our goal is muscle toning, even the best exercises to tone your legs will only help you so much. To accomplish muscle toning and achieving a lean sculpted look you need to make sure to burn enough calories to create a caloric deficit while controlling your caloric intake.

About Shannon Clark

Shannon holds a degree in Exercise Science and is a certified personal trainer and fitness writer with over 10 years of industry experience.