Why Squats Are Essential to Your Bodybuilding Routine

Several bodybuilders are so enamored with the bench press that they forget to use one of the most effective full body exercise - the squats. The squats is known as the grand daddy of all exercises because of the benefits one can get from it.

First, the squats build strength and initiate muscle growth on the largest muscle in your body - your legs. The legs consist of several muscle parts but are mainly divided in groups such as: the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes/ buttock muscles and calves. During squats the quadriceps is the main muscle group targeted, however, the hamstrings, glutes and calves also participate in the compound movement of the squats.

Secondly, the squats not only involve the leg muscle group but also initiate resistance to your upper muscle group like your trapezius and your back muscles. When the bar sits and digs down into your trapezius, you struggle to lift it up thus creates the aggressive movement we want to develop and gain lean mass.

Third, the squats promotes a good cardio routine. I always prepare myself - in terms of rest and proper nutrition (carbs, protein and fats) before my leg day. It involves a lot of effort to push the bar during the squat routine that it literally burns more calories than most body part exercises. When I do bench press, lat pull downs or barbell rows I don't pant and almost puke just like when I do squats. It's intense and almost insane to do!

As most pro bodybuilders would say, if you're so busy that you could only workout once a week which exercise would you choose and why? The majority of their answers are squats! Because, it's a total body workout that involves almost all of your major muscle group and it burns calories like a furnace.

Doing Leg Workouts Alone Make You Ripped?

So what's the deal with everyone avoiding leg workouts? Doing leg workouts seems like it's something that many weight lifters don't care to do. It's like people think that focusing only on their upper body is the best thing to do, while in reality it's crippling your muscle gains. Why? Well you will soon find out as you continue reading.

I realized that many lifters believe that by not working out on their legs and solely training their upper body is a great thing to do, because they would only need to worry about getting their upper body bigger without being concerned about how big their leg muscles are. And this may seem logical in a way, for most people will not ask you to lift up your pants to show off your calf muscles because all the real attention is on the upper body.

Despite this working on your legs is not only important so that you won't look abnormal with a ripped huge chest and biceps while having tooth picks as your legs, for a good leg workout supplies other benefits as well. One of benefit is that the muscles developing within your legs increases the amount of anabolic (muscle building) hormones like testosterone that your body naturally produces.

How this works is that doing leg workouts such as squats allows your muscle growth to develop at another level to where other muscles in your body will grow simultaneously due to muscle building hormones that increases from working on your legs.

So in other words this means that your muscles do not just grow with particularly exercises, but by working different muscles in your body (not just upper body) will allow your body to automatically target muscle growth for many various different muscles without actually having to exercise them like your abdominal muscles.

So if you are looking to really take your muscle building efforts to another level, keep in mind that leg workouts are an important factor to your muscle growth.