Avoiding Mistakes When Working Your Lower Body

Here are the most common pitfalls to watch out for when training your butt and legs:

• Don’t play favorites. In other words, don’t work your butt muscles and neglect your thighs just because you want to fill out the back of your jeans. Strive for balance. If one lower body muscle group is monstrously strong compared to the others, it pulls your posture out of alignment and you may end up with an injury.
• Don’t put your knees in jeopardy. Avoid locking your knees when you’re lifting a weight, and don’t allow your knees to shoot out past your toes in the squat, lunge, or leg press. If you feel knee pain during an exercise, stop immediately. Try another exercise and return to the one that gave you trouble after you’ve been training for a few weeks. Or perform a simpler version of the exercise, restricting the distance you move the weight.
• Don’t perform more than 15 repetitions for any leg exercise for strength training. Some people, afraid of developing bulky legs, use extremely light weights and perform 40 repetitions. You’re not going to build much strength this way, and you’ll probably fall asleep in the middle of a set. You also increase your chance of injury from placing too much repetitive stress on your joints.