|
If you are determined to live the fitness lifestyle but are dealing with a chronic lower back injury you likely have trouble training your legs with the traditional gym exercises. Using weightlifting exercises such as squats or weighted lunges just aren’t possible because of the spinal loading. But if you want to be really fit you need to train your legs. So what can you do? As always, make sure you not are currently rehabilitating an injury, and as in all these chronic injury situations, check with your physician prior to beginning any new fitness routine. If you have the thumbs up to workout, here are a few exercise suggestions to get your legs working. Body-Weight-Only Lunges: Just because you can’t strap a barbell across your shoulders doesn’t mean you can’t get a great workout from body weight exercises. High repetitions are a great way to challenge your strength and burn fat. Do repetitions of 12 to 25 and you’ll see yourself getting stronger and leaner. Lunges should be a staple of any of your fitness workout plans. Bent Squats: Face a wall about arms-length away. Put your hands on the wall to balance yourself and then squat down on the balls of your feet until your hamstrings are touching your calves. Now keep your head at the level where it is but squat up until your legs are straight. So at the top of the squat it looks like you are bent over. As you squat push your butt back as far as you can the whole time. Now descend to the starting position and repeat in a rhythmical tempo. This bent over squat takes all the spinal loading out of the equation. And pushing your butt back as you squat up will ensure you hips and thighs are doing the lifting, not your knees. Again keep the repetitions high; 30 to 50 per set. Pistols: For those of you who want to get really strong, pistols are the ultimate goal. Stand on one leg and hold the other leg straight out at waist height. Now squat down until you can go no lower and stand back up. Do not let the leg being held out touch the ground. This may be really hard to do at first, so to begin hold onto something to help you balance. Also, when starting you may want to let the leg being held out to rest on the ground until you are strong enough to hold it up for the duration of the exercise. If you can work up to 10 repetitions or higher for each leg on this exercise, you are going to be strong. Leg Extensions: If you are a member of a gym here is a machine you can use. Do repetitions for 12 to 15 for each set. Don’t go too heavy on this exercise as it can have a shearing effect on your knee-cap. As with everything in life, moderation is the key. Find a working weight where you can comfortably do your desired rep range. Leg Curls: Ditto for Leg Curls This is a very complete and challenging leg fitness routine. Do 3 sets of each exercise. Once you have done 3 sets of one exercise move onto the next one. Do this routine once a week as part of your fitness workout plans. If you are not strong enough to do the pistols at the beginning omit them from the routine for the first two months. After that time slowly work up to being able to do sets of 10 or more. You’ll notice that this fitness routine is intended to get you strong. Putting on a little muscle will help you lean out tremendously. That is not to say this fitness exercise will make you muscle-bound, far from it. But muscle burns fat even while at rest, so the more you hold on your physique the more fat you will burn even when you’re not at the gym. So if you want to lean down and you want to get that six-pack of abs you better train your legs and train them hard. Leg training will also affect your metabolism for the better so it is not something you can or should ignore. Just because you have a chronic back injury doesn’t mean you can’t train your legs and get them feeling strong and looking great. If you want to learn more about diet and great fitness workout plans ask the people who know. ImpactFitnessInc.com will help you lose weight and get you powerful, lean, and feeling great.
Related Articles -
Fitness, Fitness Routine, Fitness Workout Plans,
| 
