How strong is your lower body? Having a strong lower body can help you move with ease and function throughout the day. While improving posture and preventing injury. Making daily tasks like walking, running, jumping and even squatting down to reach for something easier.
Lower body strength offers numerous benefits, such as improved balance, stability, enhanced mobility, strong bone density and a boosted metabolism. Strong legs and glutes are crucial for injury prevention, particularly as we age, and can contribute to better overall health and longevity.
Leg and glute training engages the major muscle groups of your body, which helps to improve overall athletic performance and support healthy movement patterns in your daily life.
Building a powerful lower body helps to:
- Build muscle
- Tone and sculpt legs
- Strengthen core muscles
- Burn calories and promote weight loss
- Reduce arthritis
- Reduce joint pain
- Strengthen bones
- Alleviate lower back pain
- Create an aligned, balanced and symmetrical body
- Improve mobility, stability and range of motion
- Improve posture
Now, neglecting your lower body can lead to muscle imbalances, poor posture, increased injury risk, brittle bones and poor function. Specifically, it can weaken your legs, impact stability for the support of your joints and create a disproportionate physique. Ignoring leg workouts can also negatively affect your overall fitness and functional strength.
Think of your body as a machine. You’ve got to make sure that every bolt, screw and working component of your body is in top shape. While the effects of ignoring your glutes, thighs, hamstrings and calves may not be felt immediately, failing to keep them in shape will eventually catch up with you.
Did you know that you can start losing bone density by the time you reach your 30s. Low decreased muscle mass was shown to be linked to impaired balance and increased risk of falls. The combination of low muscle mass, low bone density and hip fractures can have lifelong consequences for women over 65 with low muscle mass, more than 50% who break a hip in a fall never walk again.
Here’s a true story and perfect example of neglect and poor lower body health. Both of my parents are in full-time assisted living facilities and are no longer able to live in their home. Over the past few years, they both had a few falls and were unable to recover because neither one of them had enough lower body strength and function before the falls. At that point, physical therapy wasn’t able to help get them strong enough to walk again. They are both in full-time wheelchairs and are only in their mid 70s. Had their bodies been stronger before the falls, they most likely would’ve been able to recover and still have the ability to walk after physical therapy.
Here’s ways to improve lower body strength:
- Walking stairs
- Squats
- Lunges
- Hiking
- Walking Incline
- Swimming
- Lower body strength training
- Balance exercises
Ashley LaMorte is a nationally certified fitness instructor and has been in the fitness industry close to a decade. Over the years, she has gotten the opportunity to instruct group X boot camps at gyms and train private clients from all walks of life, all over the Bay Area. She now has her own mobile fitness business LaMorte Lift. Learn more at LaMorteLift.com.
