When I was in college and was personal training I had a client Susan who signed up with me. Susan was a relatively healthy 30 year old with the exception of about 50 pounds she had accumulated from sitting at a desk while building her business with her husband. Like most she wanted to lose weight and get in great shape to restore her self confidence and be successful in all her life endeavors. Initially I trained her like my other female clients and planned her eating program, structured in her cardio just after each weight training session which was for 20 minutes total initially until we built up her stamina and paced ourselves according to her level of fitness. Over several months she improved dramatically on her strength, stamina and fat loss. However we had discovered a problem…
The Problem Area
My client Susan was losing weight mostly from her upper body and very little from her legs and gluteus. I decided to not only switch up the cardio to include the
elliptical and
stepper but to also add morning cardio creating a twice a day workout for metabolic boosting and to ramp up to phase two training. Again she was losing weight and leaning out but more so with her upper body still. I researched everything I could find; I mean this was really a challenge for a young trainer and I was determined to find the answer.
The Solution
What I discovered was even though Susan was getting leaner and stronger her legs and gluteus were dominant in her structure with the pear type body and had actually gained muscle underneath the fat layers of her legs and lower half creating a even greater disproportionate look . So we switched to a leg shrinking program that included training the upper and lower body together but giving the upper body more rest to recover while overtraining the lower half. Most weight training books and experts will tell you that the rest and recovery are vital to muscle hypertrophy and overtraining can cause muscles to actually atrophy. So the idea was to find something on the cusp of overtraining for the lower half without pushing Susan to exhaustion.
Our New Strategy Tricks to Success
1. Train some portion of legs everyday whether it is quads, hams or gluteus.
2. Combine exercises for a fast paced workout almost cardio in nature and created mini super-sets for legs after your regular upper body workout.
3. Continue cardio for 30-40 minutes per day including a variety of machines specifically elliptical and stair climber machines.
4. Combine leg workouts that include weights and plyometric type movements which can substantially lean out a woman’s lower body,
5. Add spinning class once a week
6. Train glute specific exercises lunges, one leg squats, deep squats light weight, box jumps
7. Eat 5-6 snack per day spaced evenly avoiding carbohydrates after 5 pm
The Workout
Day 1: Chest / Shoulders / Legs – superset 3-4 times Leg Curls, Leg Extensions Walk Lunges
Day2: Back/ Biceps/ Legs- Leg Press, Squat Jumps, One legged stationary squat
Day 3: Legs leg Extensions, leg curls, platforms step ups inner outer thigh machine and Spinning
Day 4: Walk lunges, box jumps, glute contractions on hyper extension
