For pear shaped women your lower body drives you absolutely crazy. We all know that while you diet and exercise you lose weight throughout your chest, arms, back, and shoulders first. The legs will stubbornly hang onto every ounce of fat and cellulite to the bitter end.
Most pear shaped women make the mistake of doing extensions, inner and outer thigh work, and leg presses with lots of weight on those fancy gym machines trying to “spot reduce the fat on their legs” while totally ignoring their upper body. Don’t fall into this trap! The best way to attack your legs is a two-pronged approach:
1. Get off the machines and into body weight, high-intensity circuit leg training.
2. Work your upper body heavy with targeted arms and shoulders cardio pops.
By keeping leg day as high-intensity as you can, you will really see changes by including fat blasting circuit work like those in my Fat Blasting Training Schedules. Here’s an example of a late beginner to intermediate leg routine you can try to see if you are ready for PNP style work. If this routine is too tough, you are a beginner and need the Let’s Get It Started to work your way into these workouts.
Find a long hallway where you can do 15 walking lunges down and 15 walking lunges back. This is your leg day runway! Each down and back is considered a pass. Do each of the following groups of exercises back-to-back only taking a 30-60 second break between each set of three.
Group One: Repeat three times with a 30-60 break between each repeat (or set)
1 pass walking lunges
1 pass walking squats
2 passes of sprints
Group Two: Repeat three times with a 30-60 break between each repeat (or set)
1 pass squat shuffle (squat and walk in squat position without coming up)
1 pass walking lunge pumps (do a walking lunge but double pump yourself each step)
2 passes sprints
Next…
Find a set of stairs and climb two at a time for thirty seconds. March in place for thirty seconds. Repeat stairs for ten minutes. OR, you can use a stairmaster and do 30 seconds of deep climbing mixed with 30 seconds of easy climbing for 30 seconds.
If you are really motivated…
To finish off the legs you can do my classic Baby’s Got Back from the Work Your Butt Off Book. If you don’t have the book (why?) you can simply find a treadmill and walk backwards at a low speed on a nice incline for five to ten minutes.
Now, this is a high-intensity but sculpting leg workout. Enjoy!