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What Happens If You Skip Leg Day? (Is It Ok To Skip It?)

If you’re wondering what happens if you skip leg day, then you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, I explain the consequences of avoiding leg day, whether you can skip leg day once, and other useful information.

young woman doing lunges on leg day

What Is Skipping Leg Day?

Skipping leg day simply means that you avoid training your legs in the gym.

This can give you an imbalanced physique as most people who skip leg day still train their upper body.

Why Do People Skip Leg Day?

Most people skip leg day as leg day is so hard.

This is because the legs are the largest muscle group, so your body is more stressed when training legs.

Also, many leg exercises, like squats, train multiple muscle groups at once, which means they’re very demanding and consume a lot of energy.

(This is why you should eat more on leg day.)

And.

Some people skip legs as they’re one of the least noticed muscles.

In other words, it’s hard to ‘show off’ your legs, whereas someone with big biceps stands out from the crowd.

As a result, these people think it’s not worth training legs.

What Happens If You Skip Leg Day?

If you skip leg day, then your leg muscles will have no reason to grow.

Over time, this can lead to a disfigured body shape if your upper body is still trained, which can increase the chances of injury.

Also, you may be ridiculed by your fellow gym buddies as there’s quite a lot of stigma around skipping leg day.

Why Shouldn’t You Skip Leg Day?

You shouldn’t skip leg day as leg day helps you get abs, increases weight loss, and leads to a more balanced physique.

Let’s cover these in a bit more detail.

Leg Day Helps You Get Abs

man showing his six pack abs

To get six pack abs, you need to have low levels of body fat and developed ab muscles.

Training your legs helps you lose body fat as it burns a ton of calories, which puts you in a calorie deficit.

And a calorie deficit is the ultimate factor when it comes to fat loss.

Also, some leg exercises like squats and lunges work your ab muscles, which help them grow.

Leg Day Leads To A Balanced Physique

As covered earlier, skipping leg day can lead to an unnatural, imbalanced body.

The reason being people who skip leg day still train their other body parts.

So in order to have a well-rounded physique, training your legs is an essential part of the puzzle.

Leg Day Increases Weight Loss

When you train legs, you’re training the biggest muscle group in your body.

But that’s not all though…

You’re also indirectly training other muscle groups, like abs.

This is because many leg exercises are compound exercises.

As a result, you burn more calories on leg day.

And as I’m sure you know, burning calories is key to weight loss.

Is It Ok To Skip Leg Day Once?

It is ok to skip leg day once and it shouldn’t result in you losing leg strength or size.

In fact, if your legs are fatigued from another activity, then it’s maybe wise to skip leg day so that your muscles fully recover.

That said, skipping leg day just once can become a habit.

And before you know it, you’re skipping leg day altogether!

How Can You Stop Skipping Leg Day?

Most people see leg day as a daunting challenge.

So, an easy way to overcome this is to see it in its smaller parts.

Let me explain…

Leg day is nothing more than turning up to the gym, then doing a variety of leg exercises.

So, step 1 of doing leg day is turning up to the gym.

That’s right – if you simply turn up to the gym on leg day, you’ve already won half of the battle.

Once you’re at the gym, then simply do a single set of squats.

Now that wasn’t too bad, was it?

Once you’ve got over that first hurdle of doing that first set, momentum will be on your side.

So, the key is to take leg day bit by bit, rep by rep, set by set.

Should You Skip Leg Day If Your Knee Hurts?

The first thing you need to consider is the source of your knee pain.

If it’s acute, i.e. sudden knee pain that’s a result of an injury, then resting your knee is the best thing to do for it to heal.

As a result, you should skip leg day in this situation as you wouldn’t want to aggravate the pain and slow down the recovery.

Whereas if your knee pain is chronic, i.e. long term knee pain that’s a result of inflammation, then you should focus on resolving that inflammation before training legs.

So in short, you shouldn’t do anything that would worsen your knee pain regardless of if it’s acute or chronic.

Should You Skip Leg Day If You’re Injured?

Well, this depends on the nature of your injury and which body part it’s affecting.

If you’ve injured your leg, then you should definitely avoid training legs as you don’t want to worsen your injury.

Similarly, if you’ve injured a muscle that’s used when training legs, like your lower back, then again, you should skip training legs.

Whereas if you’ve injured your bicep, you should be fine training legs as long as you stick to exercises which don’t put tension on your biceps.

Can You Skip Leg Day If You Have Big Legs?

If you have naturally big leg muscles, then skipping leg day shouldn’t be a problem for you.

Why?

Well, it’ll be easier to maintain a balanced physique if your leg muscles are already developed.

That said, if you want the other benefits from leg day, like increased weight loss and six pack abs, then I’d recommend you still do leg day.

Can You Skip Leg Day If You Play Football?

This depends on how well football trains your legs.

If you’ve noticed that your leg muscles are bigger and stronger from playing football, then it should be fine for you to skip leg day.

Whereas if football fails to add mass to your legs, then you may want to train them separately to ensure your body is balanced.

Conclusion

In summary:

  • Most people skip leg day because it’s arguably the most difficult workout.
  • While it’s ok to skip leg day once, your legs will lose strength and muscle if you skip it consistently.
  • Skipping leg day is ok if you have naturally big legs.

That’s all for this article, but does leg day count as cardio? Or can you do Stairmaster after leg day?

Hope this helped!

Sources

https://www.menshealth.com/uk/building-muscle/a757214/5-reasons-why-leg-day-is-so-important/