Tier II: legs

We have discussed the most important muscles to train: your core. Now let’s talk about the second most important group: your legs. Legs are strong. They are real workhorses. We stand on them for hours a day, and expect them to allow this without protest.

But this also means that, if your legs are unbalanced or not strong enough, other muscles will compensate in extreme ways. If you stand too much on your left leg, for example, the right side of your body will tighten up to keep balance. If your calves aren’t strong enough, your foot won’t properly roll off the ground when walking. And when walking doesn’t go smoothly, you guessed it—we start compensating elsewhere.

Stretching

Many people naturally have one shorter leg and one longer leg. By default, they’ll prefer the longer one, as it’s easier to stand on and it will bear more of the weight. This isn’t a huge deal. Although it’s always recommended to train both legs equally, and stand on both equally.

But often, discrepancies are merely the result of tension and stress in the hips and thights. Our “stress muscle” is located there. When we feel vulnerable or sad, we “close down” and remove the flexibility in these joints.

As such, I always recommend some simple leg stretching at the start of your day.

• Do a lunge forward. Really try to go as far forward as you can.
• Completely lean on your forward leg, keep your back leg on the ground
• Try to sink as low as you can to the ground, without your knee touching it
• Keep your upper body upright.
• Hold this for a longer period

If one of your legs is stiff, this should stretch it. It should feel like a burning sensation. This is good. (Although this is risky to write online. Consult an expert when in doubt.)

Do this regularly, and you should notice your legs becoming more flexible, more open, more balanced.

This is step one. Making your legs stronger will not solve differences in height or tension, or train your body to use both of them equally. You should only strengthen your legs after stretching and getting the right posture.

Sidestep

This starts as a stretching exercise.

• Stand up straight
• Raise your knee
• Rotate that same leg outward, until your knee point to your side
• Then slowly place it in the ground again.
• Alternate and repeat.

Again, you should be able to rotate equally far with both legs. Some key points:

• If this is hard, engage your abs. It’s likely your back is too hollow, which restricts movement.
• Don’t do this too fast. Or stomp on the ground at the end. Make it slow and controlled, otherwise stretching turns into tearing.

If this goes well, you can turn it into a strength exercise.

• Find a circular resistance band. (So, a closed loop, not two separate ends. Although you can always tie a knot.)
• Bind it around your legs, right above the knees.
• Now simply sidestep through a space, from left to right, and back again. (So, move your leg sideways, plant foot on the ground. Now move your right leg sideways to stand right next to the left leg again.)

This really targets the muscles at the side. The ones actually used for keeping balance and not falling to one side, but often forgotten.

But this exercise allows a bit of compensation. How can we target the side muscles on their own?

Side extensions

These are usually called hip abductions. Lay on the ground, on your side. Now simply raise your upper leg (not touching the ground) sideways.

This is hard. The muscles are not used to it. (Which is exactly why we train them!)

If this goes well, make it harder:

• Stand upright. (Perhaps with one foot on an unstable surface.)
• Wind a resistance band around your foot and some anchor point on the ground.
• Now move your foot sideways and back again.

Some key notes:

• Try to always keep some tension on the resistance band. This makes the exercise more efficient, as there are no “pauses”.
• Really use your side muscles for this. Don’t start compensating by moving your foot more forward or backward, thus putting the load on other muscles.

Tip-toe exercises

How weight is distributed on our feet is important.

The easiest exercise is just to stand on your toes. Try to stand, as long as you can, on your toes. To make it harder, stand on one leg at a time. If you can do that, start doing other stuff (like knee raises or hip abductions) with the other leg.

Otherwise, a common exercise is the step-up.

• Place something in front of you with a low height, like a low bench, a raised crosswalk, anything. As long as it’s stable enough.
• Step on it with one foot, like taking the stairs.
• Then step down again.
• Alternate and repeat.

You’ll notice you can’t keep your balance if your weight is not at the front. If this is easy, you can add all sorts of variations. Add extra weights. Add a knee-raise. Raise the height.

Your body is a system with many parts. If you feel the weight is only on one specific part of your feet, you can change that in two ways:

• Train your feet
• Train other parts of your body that are compensating

I always recommend both ways, simultaneously.

Ball bridges

This requires a yoga ball. The idea is simple: create a bridge with the ball.

This can be done in two ways:

• Place your head on the ball, your feet on the ground. Raise your hips so your upper body is completely parallel with the ground. (For added difficulty, do knee raises.)
• Place your feet on the ball, head on the ground. Again, raise your hips, walk the ball back (towards you), which means you end with your knees very high in the air

The first method is great for training stability, leg balance and core: the “front” part of your body. The second method is mostly great for your calves and the “back” part.

Again, this will be tough at first. You will fall over once or twice. Don’t be afraid. Just try it, learn how the ball distorts your balance, and soon you can work with it.

Once you can do exercises on unstable surfaces, you’ll notice just how much stronger and more balanced your body has become.

The obvious activities

To generally strengthen your legs, you can do any of the obvious activities:

• Walking
• Running
• Cycling
• Any sport that, you know, is not played while sitting
• Anything where you have to jump

In general, two sport categories exist.

• One contains many long runs, like football.
• Others are full of tiny, short sprints, like table tennis or badminton.

These train different areas in different ways. I therefore recommend you try to vary those activities.

Once you think about it, you realise our legs do everything. Keeping them strong, balanced and stretched is therefore more important than training your upper body.

But now the time has come: let’s talk about that upper body.