When it comes to working out, the words ‘lower body training’ usually have one of two effects: they either get people excited and heading for the gym ready to embrace a challenging workout, or they fill them with utter dread.

Whatever your reasons for exercising, whether for general fitness, to lose weight, increase strength or to improve your performance in a sport, working on your lower body should be an integral part of your training plan.

In case you need a little more convincing of the benefits of lower body training, here are just a handful of reasons why you shouldn’t skip leg day:

1. You’ll burn more calories and increase your metabolism

The reason for this is pretty straightforward: the muscles in the lower half of your body are the biggest (your gluteus maximus is actually the largest muscle in your body), which means in order to work them, they require a lot of energy. In other words, your lower body muscles need and burn more calories to function properly then your smaller muscle groups do.

Lifting weights helps you to build and maintain muscle mass, and the beauty of muscle is that it’s very metabolically active, ie it keeps your metabolism revving high. So, when you have strong lower body muscles — thanks to consistent resistance training — even when you’re at rest, your metabolism will still be firing high and burning through calories and fat. This will help you to develop and maintain an overall lean body, as well as toned legs.

2. You’ll run faster and for longer, while also reducing the risk of running injuries

There are several reasons why lower-body strength and resistance training can help make you a better runner. It’s a bit of a myth that endurance athletes should shy away from hitting the weights.

Movements such as squats and dead lifts help to develop your hips, which are often a weak point and the major source of many injuries for runners. Patellofemoral pain syndrome (also known as runner’s knee), for example, can be caused by hip dysfunction, and tight or weak hips can cause compensations elsewhere in the body that result in knee injuries.

Strengthening the hips and gluteus is one of the best injury-prevention measures a runner can take. Add that to the fact that lower body lifting will also help improve power in your legs, and you’ll find that your speed improves when it comes to sprinting, and your efficiency improves in endurance runs.

3. You’ll relieve lower back pain.

Lower backache or pain is something that affects many of us from time to time. Why is it so prevalent? Well, it’s largely down to our fairly sedentary lifestyles. We’re not naturally designed to sit down for long periods, so when we do, consistently over time, our lower body muscles tend to get lazy and weaken, and our hip flexors shorten too. This can mean that our lower back becomes at risk as it ends up having to do a lot of the work our lower body muscles would normally do during everyday tasks. Over time, our back muscles become more susceptible to being overworked and risk injury.

When lower back pain does occur, we often just focus on relieving the pain in the localised area, but most of us would be better off working on strengthening our gluteus and hamstrings as well as working on our core muscles for stability, and stretching our hip flexors. This way, all our lower body muscles can be used effectively and work in synergy instead of us relying on our lower back for all the support.

4. It improves mental strength

After years of being a coach and working in the fitness industry, I can honestly say that the number one reason most people choose to avoid training their lower body is because it’s hard. As we’ve already discussed, to train legs you’re using a lot of muscle, the most in your body, which means it’s physically very challenging, exhausting even. Plus, if your muscles are underdeveloped due to years of bad lifestyle habits, then you have even more obstacles to overcome. It makes sense if leg day fills you with dread and you’d rather avoid it, so I do understand. But excuses are always easy to come by, so this is where you need to flip the switch on your perspective.

Embrace the challenge, rather then let it beat you.

See a leg day as a chance for a ‘double win’, to not only train the biggest muscles in your body, but also hurdle one of your biggest mental stumbling blocks. Treat it as an opportunity to make some real improvement; persevere and your progress will become abundantly clear.

•Becky Wright is a qualified personal trainer, nutritional therapist and international bikini fitness champion. She has worked with clients worldwide, including royalty. Contact her at www.beckywrightfitness.com or becky@beckywrightfitness.com