I have always felt like I was a little “disproportionate” when it comes to my upper body vs. lower body. I sometimes joke that I am two different people glued together. But as the years have gone on, I have learned to love my curves, love my booty, and love my hips. I figure that God made me this way for a reason and I can either hate it or embrace it, and I choose to embrace it. Now, there are still certain things about my body that I am working to transform or “change”, but that isn’t because I am unhappy with the way I look now. I am simply enthralled with the fact that by eating different combinations of food for fuel, and training muscle groups in a certain sequence, we can transform our bodies to look any way that we would like. Sure, it’s a hard, long, and often exhausting process, but the results are WELL worth the blood, sweat, and tears that go into the effort.

I am training for strength when I train my legs, but I am not necessarily training for SIZE. There IS a difference. I already have the size when it comes to muscle, so my focus is to keep the blood flow within those muscles so that they stay long, lean, and strong.  You will lose it if you don’t use it!

A lot of times in order to achieve the long and lean muscle look, I will work in the 12-15 rep range with 3 sets of each exercise, sometimes 4 sets if I am feeling like an over achiever. Often, I will do two exercises that work opposing muscle groups back to back (for example, lunges for quads with straight leg or dead lift for hamstring) This allows me to decrease my rest period between lifts, REALLY fatigue my muscles, and allows for my workouts to be a little shorter. (LEG DAYS ARE ALWAYS SO LONG!!!!!)

Today, I did more of a “circuit” lift by setting up 6 different exercises and working through them in stations, three times through.  Try it out and let me know what you think!

My wonderful friend Alicia Marie has helped me perfect my leg and booty workouts, so I have to give her a shout-out here! Alicia is one of the most genuine people I have ever met. She is SO inspiring and provides a BUNCH of information and tips through video and her website fitpop.com! She is in phenomenal shape, and is absolutely one of the most beautiful women I know, inside AND out!
She has SO MANY awesome leg/booty moves and even has a booty bible that is available online. GET IT!!!!!!

OKAY, now for the dirty details….here we go!

Pre-workout meal- 1 cup rolled oats and 6 egg whites
Pre-workout- sledgehammer green apple (I really like this pre-lift! Felt super focused and energized all workout and didn’t feel jittery afterwards whatsoever!)
Intra-workout- Amino Recovery by bodybuilding.com in Watermelon flavor (I love this product!)

Leg workout:

Warm-up on elliptical 5-10 minutes at a moderate level (I was on level 10)

I did this circuit 3 times through and tried for 12-15 reps with each lift (12-15 on EACH side for the single leg exercises. Don’t cheat yourself by only doing 12-15 total!)

 (As always, click the name of the lift for a link that gives a tutorial of how to perform the lift properly)

Curtsey Lunges  (you can use a weighted barbell if you would like, or just use body weight

Single leg straight leg (10 lb dumbbell)

Bulgarian Split Squats (I used a 30 lb bar and I just put my foot up onto the bench used for bench press)

Good mornings (I used a 40 lb bar)

My FAVE Alicia Marie ballet squats ( SO AWESOME!!!!!)

Hamstring exercise ball roll-ups

I finished with 3 sets of 20 lower back extensions which also targets glutes and hamstrings (I used a 10 lb plate)

 ALL DONE! Your legs and booty will thank you tomorrow! xoxo Mac