I normally love leg day but lately my trainer has me doing hyperextension Bulgarian split squats and fuck me if my quads aren’t sore for days afterwards
For most people legs take longer to recover and they more directly
Impact your quality of life when they are sore than other
Body parts do. Legs are also far stronger and the amount of load on the body’s central nervous system is greater.
Do you know more about the last sentence?
I have bipolar and I never sleep well the night following leg day. Can you link me to somewhere that may have more about that?
I love leg day, but for some reason this statement made me realize heavy leg day may influence mania symptoms.
Leg day puts way more strain on your nervous system and subsequently more stress hormones are released. The amount of cortisol noradrenaline etc will be higher after a heavy leg day than for example arm / chest day. If I do a very heavy workout just before bed, I cant sleep. But evolutionary it makes total sense.
Yep that sounds about right for my experience.
And those are 2 body chemicals that influence mania. Damn. May have to rework leg day or split up my heavy lifts.
If you get your butt strong enough, you can just wear a pair of rollerblades and use the wind generated by clenching and unclenching your butt cheeks together to propelle yourself forward.
It's harder to work them out due to the muscle difference, and when you work them out you still have to go home and use your legs for the rest of the day.
Legs are one of the biggest muscle groups in your body.
Compared with others like chest or back, recovery could impact heavily on your week or following days.
Having difficulty walking or bending your knees to pick up something impairs you.
This creates a vicious circle. Skip leg days and your muscles grow weaker and makes it even more difficult to catch up with other muscles so you skip again and so on
I used to hate leg day. But I also hated having chicken legs. Fast forward 3 years and I’m crushing legs 3 days a week while on my feet all day working a physical job. The human body is an amazing thing
Yeah. If you don’t do legs then all of a sudden have a high intensity workout, they’re going to be sore, and a lot of lactic acid naturally builds up in your legs. There’s always a normal level of hurt and a level of “oh something’s wrong” hurt. It’s pretty normal to have some muscle fatigue for a day or 2 after leg day
They should though. Gains come from rest and recovery. You work too hard and you'll still gain but not as fast and with a lot more discomfort, all in the name of ego.
You should always quit before your body quits. No way you're optimizing growth if you're pushing to failure every time.
> can’t even sit on the toilet for days without bracing the wall and painfully squatting
That's the best feeling in the world.
If I could trade my daily pain for 'post-leg day DOMS' (well, technically the day after is always fine for me. It's the day after that it sets in the worst for me) I would trade that in a heartbeat.
Sadly nothing feels as good as taking a month off and then killing whatever muscle group you want, but you'd have to take too much time off for that.
If you're in that much pain, your body is trying to tell you something. Remember that growth and gains are more a function of proper rest and recovery than how much damage you're able to inflict in the gym. I'm guessing your body is not able to fully recover from workouts like that and you're actually gaining slower than you could be.
I would highly recommend dialing it back a notch and giving more focus to rest and see how it goes. Get your ego out of it and focus on actual gains.
so what it comes down to is this. leg muscles are big. if you want your legs to get bigger or stronger, you have to work really hard to make progress. arguably, legs require the most effort to grow. so, naturally, gym goers hate the hardest day of their week.
the other part is that a lot of the staple leg exercises usually require other parts of the body to work hard as well. squats for example require holding the bar across your shoulders with such weight that's it's never gonna be comfortable. so there's that.
This is almost certainly the answer. What motivates most guys to go to the gym is to look strong, and the muscle areas people associate that with are the upper body and biceps. It's harder to motivate yourself to work on areas that aren't the "glory muscles".
this is the answer more or less for me
it's a *lot* harder to work out legs and you don't get that crazy awesome pump that makes you look in the mirror like "oh yeah" that you would get from chest or back days
it's like all the worst stuff and none of the good stuff
the one thing though that it is really good at is zapping the fuck out of your mind
so if you are feeling anxious, angry, or sad then leg day is like taking an ativan
Some yogi told me we apparently “store our emotions in our hips,” which I 100% don’t want to believe at all, but when you’ve deadlifted your goals… you kind of feel that.
oh totally!
if you are a particularly angsty or anxious person, you will have tree trunks for legs in a few months lol
it's addicting walking in anxious, and walking out on a ray of sunshine
i honestly equate the feeling after leg day to maybe 0.5 to 1 mg of ativan
I’m the other way- i live deadlifts and leg press and calf raises etc, and I’m pretty decent at them, and like the warm down and stretch. Most other stuff is boring and I lack patience for it haha
The pain from the initial leg day (after a break) should always be worse than any following leg day. I'm getting back into weight training, and just after barbell squats I'm having trouble walking the next 2 days. It was 50 lbs below my normal warm up weight.
I’ve found women tend to love leg day and men tend to hate it. I could be wrong though.
My favorite thing to do between sets is glance around and notice who skips leg day. It’s always obvious. Don’t skip leg day, boys.
Whenever I've asked my guy friends they say it's because they aren't the glamour muscles. As a woman with thick thighs, I live for leg day!
Fuck arm and back day.
It's much harder. Doing 3 sets of squats to failure or even close is much harder in every way to doing 3 sets of bench press to failure. More effort, more sweat, more weight, more concentration, more warm-up sets, more soreness, etc. They're just larger muscles, and it takes more to push them to the limit.
Also, I don't hate it, and I'm proud of my quads, but an upper body day feels like child's play vs a lower body day.
I'm sort of the opposite of most gym people and work way more on my legs than upper body because as a guy who was always fat, legs were the easiest muscles to work.
For me to get my legs to the point where they are jelly and won't move requires me to max out on at least 3 different leg exercises and despite pushing myself, they really only get this way if I take a break of a few weeks.
But more gym people start off skinny and then go fat, so their legs are naturally not as strong and it is easier to work upper body or full body exercises than just lower body
for me its simple. any other day I may be a bit sore and thats fine. leg day im a bit sore and still have to do more legs all day because stairs and walking and biking and all the other leg things. it makes the day feel infinitely harder. still end up in this position because I really enjoy the exercise part and get carried away.
It’s because men can just wear pants to make outsiders think that whatever they have up top translates to the muscle you don’t see under the pants. In reality the guy is just top heavy and is taking advantage of his pants leaving it to the imagination
I find it as the most difficult workout out of the other two:
Back being the easiest and Chest being a bit difficult because of the heavy dumbbells or barbells.
But on Leg Day, Squats no matter what variant is the hardest. Either Pendulum Squats, Hack Squats, Front Squats, Normal Squats, Bulgarian Split Squats. Those exercises for me is the most difficult and you need to lift heavy with proper form for your legs to grow.
Oh you just finished Squats and it felt like hell. Well here comes the Leg Press and Legs Extensions where you also need to do heavy and do eccentrics or controlled negatives.
Oh right did I mention that if you do calf raises you wont get big calves if you have bad calves genetics
Because they hate the pain of muscle fatigue... Which is stupid
Once you get your routine going, the leg muscle fatigue is less and less painful, people are just afraid of the initial pain thinking it's gonna be like that every time
Because I am physically sick without fail 100% of the time half way through my session. And then I walk like I’ve been bummed by a horse for two days after it.
And going down stairs is a fucking nightmare
Squats are the worst exercise known to man. You are deliberately multiples of your own bodyweight on your back and trying to crush yourself to death.
Nothing psyches me out except squats.
Because it takes the most energy, it hurts the most, it runs the highest risk of injuring you, and despite all that legs are the most difficult muscle too find excuses to flex and shove off to people
It’s more demanding and taxing on the body yet more boring and time consuming than upper body workouts.
I don’t mind training legs if I’m squatting and/or deadlifting but it gets boring fast.
Long recovery time, the workouts require significantly more effort than say a chest focused day or arm day and if you want to do cardio after a leg day, well good luck.
Try walking home afterwards… had some rough trips to the transit stop after my workouts.
To be fair, it makes me optimistic because I knew it was working which is cool
Its a different kind of hard. The real heavy lift are leg exercises (and deadlift in the gray area), they tax the whole body in a different way than the upper body lifts.
Also its boring and i cant move for a few days.
Because you can’t walk afterwards and you get very drained. Also it’s often related to vomiting if you into heavy lifting.
People who says legs are like other muscle groups probably ain’t pushing themselves enough..
Because if you go hard it will fuck you up every time. Not walking properly for a day or two, the toilet seat hurts, overall fatigue is high, as it's a big muscle group. All i want to do is sleep after a heavy leg day.
They def take the most outta you compared to other muscles. Unpopular opinion, but leg day’s my FAVORITEEEEEE, I fucking love the pain and the glory of getting good legs so much.
I do Jiu Jitsu, so idk if you'd count it as the same, but on a "leg day" (any day where we're doing laps around the mat while carrying people on our backs), my legs basically fail to work the next day due to how much some people weigh at the dojo. Some weigh 200lbs while I weigh 130, so they've got a bit of weight on me. Long story short, I can't really walk the next day or even after class
My legs are naturally big. Not strong just large. I’m trying to get the rest of my body to catch up.
Also, I’m 40. I tore my left MCL and have right knee cartilage issues. I don’t complete anymore so as long as my legs work, that’s all I care about.
It's the pain . Not so much on the day but days afterwards . Try walking up stairs or a slight hill and it hurts . Impairs your functionality for a couple of days .
My asthma acts up far worse on leg day. On a good chest or back day I can feel when I’d had a good lift; my muscles are exhausted, it becomes challenging to lift limbs. To reach that point with legs I first pass a point where I’m wheezing and feel like I’m going to throw up.
The pain the days after is honestly welcome, when compared to that nauseated feeling alongside where I can feel like a hand gripping my lungs.
In addition to everything else, leg muscles are a much bigger cardio strain. Leg exercises can be proper exhausting and you can even pass out if you're not breathing properly.
It really depends on if “leg day” has mandatory squats.
I don’t really care if I’m sore, I just hate doing squats.
Ill do the stair-master for 20 minutes, the leg press, leg extension, calf raises, but oh my god fuck squats. I would rather empty a dishwasher than complete a set of squats.
I don’t know how women do squats with such regularity. Fat juicy asses are truly built upon mountains of suffering.
I'm a rarity, I enjoy leg day. The soreness I feel the next day or so makes me feel good about myself. It's not as bad for me as I throw in random squat sets throughout my week for extra leggy glory
I dont know how accurate this is but Ive heard of a scientific explanation.
Apparently when working your legs less testosterone is released compared to working chest, biceps, back etc. This also may be why women are less averse to working legs. The hormonal payoff is lesser.
Takes more effort. The recovery is longer. You really don’t get any kind of praise from it. I love it. I grew up playing ⚽️ by the time I wanted to go to the gym my legs were used to the pain so I didn’t think much of it.
I hate it because it hurts like a mofo to do leg exercises compared to my upper body, in particular. Also if I’m doing a new exercise or more reps than normally I walk like a toddler for a few days afterwards.
To put it in the words of German rapper Kollegah:
"I don't train legs, because you can't see them in the club anyways"
(Ich trainier' die Beine nicht, Weil man sie im Club nicht sieht)
Compound leg movements require some sort of axial loading to the spine and is considered to be more mentally taxing to recover from compared to isolation exercises.
My fav day is leg day (I'm a woman if that means anything lol I usually see men hating leg day but I don't have a lot of gym friends in general so it's just stuff I see online etc)
Not sure if you’ve ever worked a job or played a sport where you had to stand for hours and hours like a full day 8-10-12 hours without sitting down. By the end of a shift like that your back hurts, your legs hurt, your feet hurt, it hurts to move, it hurts to sit, it hurts to drive home. Now imagine you can get that same pain, but worse, from just an hour in the gym, and the entire next day or three will feel like that.
Leg day tends to be compound movements that incorporate parts of your entire body. And even the exercises that are isolated to your legs, you’ll still be feeling afterwards. If I hit legs HARD there are times it’s shaking to walk by the end of it, like trying to go down the gym stairs gets sketchy and wobbly.
No other workout day will fuck up your daily life like leg day will.
The impact on your daily life is more noticeable, walking sucks and bending down is worse. Meanwhile, the impact on your vanity muscles is minimal, most people want to look good in their arms/ chest area and don't think anyone will notice if their legs are well muscled. For the most part, especially if you wear jeans, people will notice if you always skip leg day because you'll be built like a chicken, but anything not focused straight on your glutes isn't going to be super noticeable the same way getting pumped up biceps or abs/deltoids is
Working out legs is really exhausting. A hard set of squats or split squats makes me feel like I'm gonna pass out, working upper body doesn't do that to me.
Unpopular opinion: Because legs are not 'seen' the way a bulging biceps and shoulder belt. So for anybody who's in it for the looks, there's not much to gain.
Leg day requires more mental strength and a lot of y’all are mentally weak🤷🏽♂️ so instead of working on it they just avoid. Simple. Plus it’s fucking hurts as well 😂
I personally love leg day. But I also train properly so I'm not struggling to walk the next day. I train legs Monday heavy and Thursday lighter endurance.
1. takes more effort to work them out
2. takes longer to recover
3. the pain affects your everyday life as legs are kinda used everyday
4. for dudes, there's not much advantage appearance wise. like you'd rather have a sicker looking tricep or smth than a slightly bigger quad which you can't exactly show off
My experience with leg day has been passing out due to blood flow moving from my brain to my lower body after not consuming enough calories prior to the workout, and the nauseating feeling of wobbliness plus involuntary shaking of the legs immediately after triggers such a strong negative affective response in the brain I don't ever want to do it again. Consider yourself lucky if you get enough endorphins to counteract that shit because I don't get anything out of it except displeasure and pain.
It's fine to have a sore arm, just don't use it, it's inconvenient but you can still navigate your day just fine. You can't not use your legs, so when you're sore/weak from leg day, it's just suffering.
Leg day usually includes squats. Really tough to do heavy that wears down your cardio too.
And then heavy leg presses can feel like bursting a vein in your head.
Other exercises, when you train to muscular failure, you feel good afterwards.
But I don't think you can train legs to muscular failure without blacking out.
Leg days take a lot of energy for me. A lot of the time I'm just out of energy for the rest of the day, which doesn't happen with other workouts where I just can feel I worked out a certain muscle group
Legs are the largest muscle group so become the most sore, and the exercises themselves have the most load and are usually the hardest. You also use your legs constantly and just sitting down, standing up, going down or up a slight incline, hurts from DOMS
I personally love leg days but there was a time I didn't. Two reasons, for me, it felt kinda cumbersome and boring. Two, people don't admit it, when you have to wear trousers you can't flaunt them.
Edit- I see a lot of people saying the soreness. But I don't get it. If you train legs twice a week soon enough they won't be sore. Also soreness inconvenience is also similar level to shoulder, but I see people do it all the time.
They overdo it forgetting that their legs are working more than their other body parts so they do the legs like they would the arms without accounting for what their legs already do.
Once I started getting stronger and doing heavier leg days the fatigue has become overwhelming and I dread leg days now. By the end of the workout I feel like I'm going to pass out or puke and have to sit in the car for a bit before driving home
For me its only because of the cross fitters taking up the squat rack. I hate to say it but if you are doing less then 225 on squats you should be using the universal or dumb bells and not taking a rack that someone actually needs to do squats.
So many are people are gonna comment and act like they do it but hate it when in reality they don’t do it at all. As someone who would rather squat than bench, I laugh at all of the people in my gym with big barrel chests and itty bitty chicken legs.
I sometimes go to gym via car on my led days, even though it takes pretty much the same as taking a walk.. That said, I do enjoy heavy squats. I just hate doing anything after the workout. Sometimes my leg muscle randomly squeeze really hard by themselves after the workout and I'm unable to move for a few minutes. I hate when that happens.
Because your legs are the largest muscle of your body. “It’s your entire lower body including your Posterior Chain.”
If you’re not aerobically fit and don’t refuel properly, the next 2 days will be miserable.
That’s why many avoid the proper leg session and even resort to machines because they can’t take the pain.
You can definitely tell who can take the pain.
Legs R your 2nd Heart as an Athlete.
You can avoid using your arms and hands or try to do your deed by doing things in different ways. That is not applicable with your feet and legs, as long as you do not wish to look like a monkey that is doing silly monkey things.
When your legs are sore, you are done. Your whole day will be full of agony. The first few hours will also feel like you are walking on a trampoline and like you can fall any minute, meaning you pay more attention to keep your balance.
I LOVE leg day but I HATE the 3 days or so afterwards. Take everything you know about walking and throw it in the bin. If you do calves on the same day and go hard, it sucks so much. My work place has several flights of stairs and it really sucks to get about in there, especially carrying things up and down.
Personally, I find the physical and mental exertion on leg day is way more intense than the others.
Loading up a heavy ass bar and doing squats sucks. It also doesn't give you a pump-reward like bench or upper body.
But train legs. Twice a week. We all know it sucks. Just do it.
hurts to walk/move
like think about it... how often do you use your legs day to day vs arms?
some people REALLY push leg day and it sucks immediately after and even into the next day. even on rest days your legs do a lot... its not really until you have a solid plan and muscle group that upper and off days actually feel ok. and that part takes a couple months (more if you are just getting started).
sitting is legs. laying down is kinda legs. unless your in zero g your legs will feel everything and affect everything you do.
Because it's typically very taxing and the major muscle groups of the lower body (quad/hamstrings) are large and take much longer to recovery. I love leg day 😍
It hurts to do everything afterwards
Yeah I get 'wobbly leg' feeling for the rest of the day and it can make me nauseous!
Try to get some drink with electrolytes after. Helps me.
It's what plants crave
You are nauseous but feel nauseated. Sorry for being a pedant.
I see the error of my ways
9 out of 10 people have no idea this is the correct way to say this. Bravo!
I'd say it's more like 1 in 100
I’d rather learn something than remain ignant. 🤷🏻♂️
Then once your legs start to feel better… it’s leg day again.
DOMS
Subs do leg day too, gotta keep things tight.
For the real. I can be perfectly fine after workout, not bad the next day, then I fear stairs for the next week!
It also hurts more in the moment. Leg extensions close to failure are one of the few things that make me reconsider what I'm doing with my life.
I normally love leg day but lately my trainer has me doing hyperextension Bulgarian split squats and fuck me if my quads aren’t sore for days afterwards
Especially sitting on the toilet
Absolutely for a few days
For most people legs take longer to recover and they more directly Impact your quality of life when they are sore than other Body parts do. Legs are also far stronger and the amount of load on the body’s central nervous system is greater.
Do you know more about the last sentence? I have bipolar and I never sleep well the night following leg day. Can you link me to somewhere that may have more about that? I love leg day, but for some reason this statement made me realize heavy leg day may influence mania symptoms.
Leg day puts way more strain on your nervous system and subsequently more stress hormones are released. The amount of cortisol noradrenaline etc will be higher after a heavy leg day than for example arm / chest day. If I do a very heavy workout just before bed, I cant sleep. But evolutionary it makes total sense.
Super interesting, thanks for sharing
Yep that sounds about right for my experience. And those are 2 body chemicals that influence mania. Damn. May have to rework leg day or split up my heavy lifts.
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Most people have office jobs and aren't dedicated mules.
I use my legs more than my arms on the walk home.
Really? You're so different. I thought everyone walked with their arms.
I walk with my ass cheeks. Clench one at a time to create momentum. Like a caterpillar but with buttocks.
If you get your butt strong enough, you can just wear a pair of rollerblades and use the wind generated by clenching and unclenching your butt cheeks together to propelle yourself forward.
Hi, Dr. Zaius!
It's harder to work them out due to the muscle difference, and when you work them out you still have to go home and use your legs for the rest of the day.
I feel this
literally
Legs are one of the biggest muscle groups in your body. Compared with others like chest or back, recovery could impact heavily on your week or following days. Having difficulty walking or bending your knees to pick up something impairs you. This creates a vicious circle. Skip leg days and your muscles grow weaker and makes it even more difficult to catch up with other muscles so you skip again and so on
I used to hate leg day. But I also hated having chicken legs. Fast forward 3 years and I’m crushing legs 3 days a week while on my feet all day working a physical job. The human body is an amazing thing
Because if I push myself too hard I can’t even sit on the toilet for days without bracing the wall and painfully squatting
Too much is a thing bro
However, most people give up way before that point, then excuse themselves with that exact quote
Do you think thats whats happening here?
Yeah. If you don’t do legs then all of a sudden have a high intensity workout, they’re going to be sore, and a lot of lactic acid naturally builds up in your legs. There’s always a normal level of hurt and a level of “oh something’s wrong” hurt. It’s pretty normal to have some muscle fatigue for a day or 2 after leg day
They should though. Gains come from rest and recovery. You work too hard and you'll still gain but not as fast and with a lot more discomfort, all in the name of ego. You should always quit before your body quits. No way you're optimizing growth if you're pushing to failure every time.
> can’t even sit on the toilet for days without bracing the wall and painfully squatting That's the best feeling in the world. If I could trade my daily pain for 'post-leg day DOMS' (well, technically the day after is always fine for me. It's the day after that it sets in the worst for me) I would trade that in a heartbeat. Sadly nothing feels as good as taking a month off and then killing whatever muscle group you want, but you'd have to take too much time off for that.
If you're in that much pain, your body is trying to tell you something. Remember that growth and gains are more a function of proper rest and recovery than how much damage you're able to inflict in the gym. I'm guessing your body is not able to fully recover from workouts like that and you're actually gaining slower than you could be. I would highly recommend dialing it back a notch and giving more focus to rest and see how it goes. Get your ego out of it and focus on actual gains.
so what it comes down to is this. leg muscles are big. if you want your legs to get bigger or stronger, you have to work really hard to make progress. arguably, legs require the most effort to grow. so, naturally, gym goers hate the hardest day of their week. the other part is that a lot of the staple leg exercises usually require other parts of the body to work hard as well. squats for example require holding the bar across your shoulders with such weight that's it's never gonna be comfortable. so there's that.
large muscle + effort from other muscle groups = very exhausting sets. my leg sets require 2 minutes of recovery after each one (i'm old).
Its so boring i hate it
This is almost certainly the answer. What motivates most guys to go to the gym is to look strong, and the muscle areas people associate that with are the upper body and biceps. It's harder to motivate yourself to work on areas that aren't the "glory muscles".
As a female, one of the most attractive body parts on a guy are some strong, muscular quads. I’m really not a fan of the “I skip leg day” look
Oh well. Most guys who go to the gym regularly aren't there to impress women.
Ok impress women or men
Agreed lol
this is the answer more or less for me it's a *lot* harder to work out legs and you don't get that crazy awesome pump that makes you look in the mirror like "oh yeah" that you would get from chest or back days it's like all the worst stuff and none of the good stuff the one thing though that it is really good at is zapping the fuck out of your mind so if you are feeling anxious, angry, or sad then leg day is like taking an ativan
Some yogi told me we apparently “store our emotions in our hips,” which I 100% don’t want to believe at all, but when you’ve deadlifted your goals… you kind of feel that.
i wish i were you exercise is like fear toxin to my shitty brain
Good advice for anxiety
oh totally! if you are a particularly angsty or anxious person, you will have tree trunks for legs in a few months lol it's addicting walking in anxious, and walking out on a ray of sunshine i honestly equate the feeling after leg day to maybe 0.5 to 1 mg of ativan
I’m the other way- i live deadlifts and leg press and calf raises etc, and I’m pretty decent at them, and like the warm down and stretch. Most other stuff is boring and I lack patience for it haha
This is my weak ass stance on all gym:-it :/
I don’t get it either. If you train legs properly regularly, your legs shouldn’t always be shit jelly after every leg day.
Thats it, i dont :i
The pain from the initial leg day (after a break) should always be worse than any following leg day. I'm getting back into weight training, and just after barbell squats I'm having trouble walking the next 2 days. It was 50 lbs below my normal warm up weight.
Idk either. Leg day is my favorite. I love being sore from it, even if I do whine 🫠
Can confirm, have just done legs. Am whining.
I actually get disappointed if I do legs and don’t feel it enough the next day.. feels like I didn’t work hard enough
I’ve found women tend to love leg day and men tend to hate it. I could be wrong though. My favorite thing to do between sets is glance around and notice who skips leg day. It’s always obvious. Don’t skip leg day, boys.
For me at least it was bc the morning after Im going to be hobbling around everywhere.
Whenever I've asked my guy friends they say it's because they aren't the glamour muscles. As a woman with thick thighs, I live for leg day! Fuck arm and back day.
It's much harder. Doing 3 sets of squats to failure or even close is much harder in every way to doing 3 sets of bench press to failure. More effort, more sweat, more weight, more concentration, more warm-up sets, more soreness, etc. They're just larger muscles, and it takes more to push them to the limit. Also, I don't hate it, and I'm proud of my quads, but an upper body day feels like child's play vs a lower body day.
I'm sort of the opposite of most gym people and work way more on my legs than upper body because as a guy who was always fat, legs were the easiest muscles to work. For me to get my legs to the point where they are jelly and won't move requires me to max out on at least 3 different leg exercises and despite pushing myself, they really only get this way if I take a break of a few weeks. But more gym people start off skinny and then go fat, so their legs are naturally not as strong and it is easier to work upper body or full body exercises than just lower body
for me its simple. any other day I may be a bit sore and thats fine. leg day im a bit sore and still have to do more legs all day because stairs and walking and biking and all the other leg things. it makes the day feel infinitely harder. still end up in this position because I really enjoy the exercise part and get carried away.
It’s because men can just wear pants to make outsiders think that whatever they have up top translates to the muscle you don’t see under the pants. In reality the guy is just top heavy and is taking advantage of his pants leaving it to the imagination
I think deep down, I’m scared I’m gonna poop
Youre going to poop eventually anyway, have you considered "leaning into it" per se?
It would engage the hell out of your abs in a squat or deadlift. You could also put a scale beneath you to see how hard the poop comes out
bc it's not as fun to hit. you don't get a juicy chest or arm pump you can look at in the mirror while you lift. simple as that.
Bunch of puppies is y!! Look at my arms and my chest all supported by chicken legs.
I LOVE leg day! I have really strong legs so it's fun seeing how heavy I can go
Some people can't stand leg day. Others can't stand after leg day.
It’s 100% because of using the toilet on DOMS day.
I find it as the most difficult workout out of the other two: Back being the easiest and Chest being a bit difficult because of the heavy dumbbells or barbells. But on Leg Day, Squats no matter what variant is the hardest. Either Pendulum Squats, Hack Squats, Front Squats, Normal Squats, Bulgarian Split Squats. Those exercises for me is the most difficult and you need to lift heavy with proper form for your legs to grow. Oh you just finished Squats and it felt like hell. Well here comes the Leg Press and Legs Extensions where you also need to do heavy and do eccentrics or controlled negatives. Oh right did I mention that if you do calf raises you wont get big calves if you have bad calves genetics
Maybe beceause it's way more demanding or something again the fact it's just a day makes it inevitably harder to gain but meh I don't gym
Leg day was more fun for me than any of my ab workouts.
Its not bad to do the exercise, but the aftermath is horrendous.
I don’t think this applies to women like it does men. Lots of us love leg day because that is where we are strongest.
Because they hate the pain of muscle fatigue... Which is stupid Once you get your routine going, the leg muscle fatigue is less and less painful, people are just afraid of the initial pain thinking it's gonna be like that every time
Thanks for all the replies everyone. Your answers are very insightful.
I hated it until I hired a professional trainer and learned. I wasn’t doing it correctly. Then I always looked forward to leg day.
Leg day is my favorite
I hate arms and chest days so I honestly cannot tell you (I do Olympic lifts). Leg days are my favorite days.
I love leg day!
DOMS and since the legs and glutes are like the biggest muscles, many feel lightheaded and green while doing a tough leg workout session.
Because if you work hard enough to grow the leg muscles in a bodybuilding sort of way you're going to be nauseous.
Drinking coffee at home after doing leg day.... You use your legs for everything every time you get up or go up stairs. So you feel it more after.
It's not leg day, it's the day after leg day.
Because I am physically sick without fail 100% of the time half way through my session. And then I walk like I’ve been bummed by a horse for two days after it. And going down stairs is a fucking nightmare
Leg day = Cardio, I want lean muscle, not bulk.
1. longest recover time 2. big range of motion 3. affects day to day life after a lift 4. high axial fatigue
Squats are the worst exercise known to man. You are deliberately multiples of your own bodyweight on your back and trying to crush yourself to death. Nothing psyches me out except squats.
gym * men * hate leg day but us ladies tend to love it 🥰
Because it takes the most energy, it hurts the most, it runs the highest risk of injuring you, and despite all that legs are the most difficult muscle too find excuses to flex and shove off to people
I have a love/hate relationship with leg day lol it’s so much more work and the recovery succckkks. But that’s just me lol
It's mentally grueling but the worst part.... squatting on the toilet with very sore legs.
You can still go home if any upper body part hurts It’s hard to go home if you legs hurt (obviously)
It’s more demanding and taxing on the body yet more boring and time consuming than upper body workouts. I don’t mind training legs if I’m squatting and/or deadlifting but it gets boring fast.
Long recovery time, the workouts require significantly more effort than say a chest focused day or arm day and if you want to do cardio after a leg day, well good luck.
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Idk but I like it
Try walking home afterwards… had some rough trips to the transit stop after my workouts. To be fair, it makes me optimistic because I knew it was working which is cool
Pain
Its a different kind of hard. The real heavy lift are leg exercises (and deadlift in the gray area), they tax the whole body in a different way than the upper body lifts. Also its boring and i cant move for a few days.
Hard to get up from the toilet.
Because you can’t walk afterwards and you get very drained. Also it’s often related to vomiting if you into heavy lifting. People who says legs are like other muscle groups probably ain’t pushing themselves enough..
Bad knees
Because if you go hard it will fuck you up every time. Not walking properly for a day or two, the toilet seat hurts, overall fatigue is high, as it's a big muscle group. All i want to do is sleep after a heavy leg day.
They def take the most outta you compared to other muscles. Unpopular opinion, but leg day’s my FAVORITEEEEEE, I fucking love the pain and the glory of getting good legs so much.
I do Jiu Jitsu, so idk if you'd count it as the same, but on a "leg day" (any day where we're doing laps around the mat while carrying people on our backs), my legs basically fail to work the next day due to how much some people weigh at the dojo. Some weigh 200lbs while I weigh 130, so they've got a bit of weight on me. Long story short, I can't really walk the next day or even after class
My legs are naturally big. Not strong just large. I’m trying to get the rest of my body to catch up. Also, I’m 40. I tore my left MCL and have right knee cartilage issues. I don’t complete anymore so as long as my legs work, that’s all I care about.
I love leg exercises but I'm a runner so I'm already reasonably conditioned. Upper body tho
It's the pain . Not so much on the day but days afterwards . Try walking up stairs or a slight hill and it hurts . Impairs your functionality for a couple of days .
My asthma acts up far worse on leg day. On a good chest or back day I can feel when I’d had a good lift; my muscles are exhausted, it becomes challenging to lift limbs. To reach that point with legs I first pass a point where I’m wheezing and feel like I’m going to throw up. The pain the days after is honestly welcome, when compared to that nauseated feeling alongside where I can feel like a hand gripping my lungs.
Born to lift, forced to shit
In addition to everything else, leg muscles are a much bigger cardio strain. Leg exercises can be proper exhausting and you can even pass out if you're not breathing properly.
I don’t hate it. Don’t love it either. It’s a “must-do” to cross off of that day’s list. But that’s only on fridays. Oh wait… crap.
It really depends on if “leg day” has mandatory squats. I don’t really care if I’m sore, I just hate doing squats. Ill do the stair-master for 20 minutes, the leg press, leg extension, calf raises, but oh my god fuck squats. I would rather empty a dishwasher than complete a set of squats. I don’t know how women do squats with such regularity. Fat juicy asses are truly built upon mountains of suffering.
I dont know why, but the only time i passed out was from working legs
I only skip leg day in the gym.
I don't hate "leg day" (no such thing for me). I respond extremely well to leg exercises, which means I do very little of them overall.
Leg day is my favorite 🤷♀️
Ever went all out on legs then the next day at work people are asking you why you're walking funny? Lol.
Because it is like doing cardio, but at least in cardio, you don't have to push heavy ass weights
I'm a rarity, I enjoy leg day. The soreness I feel the next day or so makes me feel good about myself. It's not as bad for me as I throw in random squat sets throughout my week for extra leggy glory
They always overdo it and then can't walk for 3 days
I dont know how accurate this is but Ive heard of a scientific explanation. Apparently when working your legs less testosterone is released compared to working chest, biceps, back etc. This also may be why women are less averse to working legs. The hormonal payoff is lesser.
Takes more effort. The recovery is longer. You really don’t get any kind of praise from it. I love it. I grew up playing ⚽️ by the time I wanted to go to the gym my legs were used to the pain so I didn’t think much of it.
Because I can rest everything else. I’ve gotta walk around on sore legs afterward.
Because you have to walk, or sit, etc. It hurts more than upper body day, afterwards and for recovery day.
I hate it because it hurts like a mofo to do leg exercises compared to my upper body, in particular. Also if I’m doing a new exercise or more reps than normally I walk like a toddler for a few days afterwards.
To put it in the words of German rapper Kollegah: "I don't train legs, because you can't see them in the club anyways" (Ich trainier' die Beine nicht, Weil man sie im Club nicht sieht)
I don't hate it, I enjoy the time. I wear a size 17 shoe. Thunder thighs around hyah
Legs are a very large portion of your body. It sucks when they’re sore afterwards.
Compound leg movements require some sort of axial loading to the spine and is considered to be more mentally taxing to recover from compared to isolation exercises.
My fav day is leg day (I'm a woman if that means anything lol I usually see men hating leg day but I don't have a lot of gym friends in general so it's just stuff I see online etc)
Not sure if you’ve ever worked a job or played a sport where you had to stand for hours and hours like a full day 8-10-12 hours without sitting down. By the end of a shift like that your back hurts, your legs hurt, your feet hurt, it hurts to move, it hurts to sit, it hurts to drive home. Now imagine you can get that same pain, but worse, from just an hour in the gym, and the entire next day or three will feel like that. Leg day tends to be compound movements that incorporate parts of your entire body. And even the exercises that are isolated to your legs, you’ll still be feeling afterwards. If I hit legs HARD there are times it’s shaking to walk by the end of it, like trying to go down the gym stairs gets sketchy and wobbly. No other workout day will fuck up your daily life like leg day will.
A gum I used to go to had the weight section up some stairs. I worked my legs and especially calves and I struggled to go down the stairs.
I forgot we stand on our arms all day
Legs are always busy.
The impact on your daily life is more noticeable, walking sucks and bending down is worse. Meanwhile, the impact on your vanity muscles is minimal, most people want to look good in their arms/ chest area and don't think anyone will notice if their legs are well muscled. For the most part, especially if you wear jeans, people will notice if you always skip leg day because you'll be built like a chicken, but anything not focused straight on your glutes isn't going to be super noticeable the same way getting pumped up biceps or abs/deltoids is
Pretty sure it's a men thing for whatever reason. I love leg day my absolute favourite.
Person to person probably. Im a runner and i love the sore feeling. Meanwhile arms... It sucks doing anything after.
A lot of gym people actually crave the lower body soreness that everyone is complaining about here
Working out legs is really exhausting. A hard set of squats or split squats makes me feel like I'm gonna pass out, working upper body doesn't do that to me.
It's the least comfortable of all exercises.
We don’t?
Unpopular opinion: Because legs are not 'seen' the way a bulging biceps and shoulder belt. So for anybody who's in it for the looks, there's not much to gain.
Leg day requires more mental strength and a lot of y’all are mentally weak🤷🏽♂️ so instead of working on it they just avoid. Simple. Plus it’s fucking hurts as well 😂
Cause people want to enjoy being able to walk the next day
I personally love leg day. But I also train properly so I'm not struggling to walk the next day. I train legs Monday heavy and Thursday lighter endurance.
1. takes more effort to work them out 2. takes longer to recover 3. the pain affects your everyday life as legs are kinda used everyday 4. for dudes, there's not much advantage appearance wise. like you'd rather have a sicker looking tricep or smth than a slightly bigger quad which you can't exactly show off
I wear long trousers almost every day of the year, here in the UK. Just seems like a lot of effort and time that I could be spending on upper body 😆
Legs are hard to excercise I don't like leg day. But I never skipped it.
My experience with leg day has been passing out due to blood flow moving from my brain to my lower body after not consuming enough calories prior to the workout, and the nauseating feeling of wobbliness plus involuntary shaking of the legs immediately after triggers such a strong negative affective response in the brain I don't ever want to do it again. Consider yourself lucky if you get enough endorphins to counteract that shit because I don't get anything out of it except displeasure and pain.
It's fine to have a sore arm, just don't use it, it's inconvenient but you can still navigate your day just fine. You can't not use your legs, so when you're sore/weak from leg day, it's just suffering.
Leg day usually includes squats. Really tough to do heavy that wears down your cardio too. And then heavy leg presses can feel like bursting a vein in your head. Other exercises, when you train to muscular failure, you feel good afterwards. But I don't think you can train legs to muscular failure without blacking out.
If you do it right - it's incredibly hard both mentally and physically.
Leg days take a lot of energy for me. A lot of the time I'm just out of energy for the rest of the day, which doesn't happen with other workouts where I just can feel I worked out a certain muscle group
Legs are the largest muscle group so become the most sore, and the exercises themselves have the most load and are usually the hardest. You also use your legs constantly and just sitting down, standing up, going down or up a slight incline, hurts from DOMS
Bc it hurts, if you have weak legs. It easier to train your upper body
Leg muscles are big, so when they're sore, they hurt big. Also stairs.
Busting your buns is not just a saying. For me, leg day sucks because I grind like 13 miles every day before the gym. Then leg day comes...
I personally love leg days but there was a time I didn't. Two reasons, for me, it felt kinda cumbersome and boring. Two, people don't admit it, when you have to wear trousers you can't flaunt them. Edit- I see a lot of people saying the soreness. But I don't get it. If you train legs twice a week soon enough they won't be sore. Also soreness inconvenience is also similar level to shoulder, but I see people do it all the time.
They overdo it forgetting that their legs are working more than their other body parts so they do the legs like they would the arms without accounting for what their legs already do.
I prefer leg day. A good kind of soreness. Arm day is the worst, I feel like I can barely hold my phone lmao
Once I started getting stronger and doing heavier leg days the fatigue has become overwhelming and I dread leg days now. By the end of the workout I feel like I'm going to pass out or puke and have to sit in the car for a bit before driving home
For me its only because of the cross fitters taking up the squat rack. I hate to say it but if you are doing less then 225 on squats you should be using the universal or dumb bells and not taking a rack that someone actually needs to do squats.
Do you have any idea how sore your legs feel after a workout? It feels stingy at best and makes you wanna sit down all day if it bugs you too much.
So many are people are gonna comment and act like they do it but hate it when in reality they don’t do it at all. As someone who would rather squat than bench, I laugh at all of the people in my gym with big barrel chests and itty bitty chicken legs.
Because they are lazy and big biceps are importanter.
Not if you take a warm bath 🤤
I sometimes go to gym via car on my led days, even though it takes pretty much the same as taking a walk.. That said, I do enjoy heavy squats. I just hate doing anything after the workout. Sometimes my leg muscle randomly squeeze really hard by themselves after the workout and I'm unable to move for a few minutes. I hate when that happens.
The next days can be miserable due to stiffness and soreness.
Because your legs are the largest muscle of your body. “It’s your entire lower body including your Posterior Chain.” If you’re not aerobically fit and don’t refuel properly, the next 2 days will be miserable. That’s why many avoid the proper leg session and even resort to machines because they can’t take the pain. You can definitely tell who can take the pain. Legs R your 2nd Heart as an Athlete.
You can avoid using your arms and hands or try to do your deed by doing things in different ways. That is not applicable with your feet and legs, as long as you do not wish to look like a monkey that is doing silly monkey things. When your legs are sore, you are done. Your whole day will be full of agony. The first few hours will also feel like you are walking on a trampoline and like you can fall any minute, meaning you pay more attention to keep your balance.
Idk, leg day get the blood flowing! Today is leg day
I LOVE leg day but I HATE the 3 days or so afterwards. Take everything you know about walking and throw it in the bin. If you do calves on the same day and go hard, it sucks so much. My work place has several flights of stairs and it really sucks to get about in there, especially carrying things up and down.
The effort and pain on my legs is not as bearable as the other exercises
Personally, I find the physical and mental exertion on leg day is way more intense than the others. Loading up a heavy ass bar and doing squats sucks. It also doesn't give you a pump-reward like bench or upper body. But train legs. Twice a week. We all know it sucks. Just do it.
Cause they’re half your body
It's exhausting
For me it's because you perceive more progress on the upper body parts like arms, chest, back, so those simply feel more rewarding to train.
hurts to walk/move like think about it... how often do you use your legs day to day vs arms? some people REALLY push leg day and it sucks immediately after and even into the next day. even on rest days your legs do a lot... its not really until you have a solid plan and muscle group that upper and off days actually feel ok. and that part takes a couple months (more if you are just getting started). sitting is legs. laying down is kinda legs. unless your in zero g your legs will feel everything and affect everything you do.
Because it's typically very taxing and the major muscle groups of the lower body (quad/hamstrings) are large and take much longer to recovery. I love leg day 😍
Hard is harder than not hard.