A model leg workout revolves around strength-building exercises that will tone your whole leg, from calf to thigh. It also raises your heart rate enough to facilitate fat-burning well after the conclusion of the actual workout.
Leg workouts can do more than just tone your legs and help with fat loss. They can also increase your core strength, improve posture and balance, and significantly improve metabolism so that you’re burning fat all day long and not just during your workout.
It’s far more than what people usually expect to gain when exercising leg muscles. Let’s explore.
Model Legs Workout
Model leg workouts tone your thighs, calves, and glutes. The primary exercises that will help you achieve this are lunges and squats. Those two exercises are the foundation of strong, well-toned legs, and will be a crucial part of your legs routine.
Lunges and squats are basic leg exercises that you can do anywhere. Though simple, they are still an essential part of any model leg workout.
The trick with these workouts is to make sure you incorporate other exercises into your routine. Put other parts of your body to work in between your leg exercises, while you wait for your legs to recover. That way, you’ll engage additional muscles, your heart rate will stay elevated as you aren’t just staying static between moves, and you will facilitate peak fat-burning in your body.
By moving from one exercise to the next without resting, you will maintain an elevated heart rate and gain the optimal physiological effect from your workout.
For example, completing a circuit of 6 different exercises, moving from one to the next without rest, will keep your heart pumping at an increased rate. At the same time, you will be toning your muscles to perfection.
Super Model Leg Proportion and Exercises
The model leg proportion is unique because models have slender legs, but at the same time, they maintain good muscle definition and tone.
To achieve this, do the following routine:
- Do a leg-based strength exercise
- Do an ab-based exercise
- Then go back to a leg-based exercise
- Finish with an arm exercise.
Alternate between leg exercises and ones that focus on other parts of your body.
That way, you’re involving more muscles than you usually would. The goal is to rest your legs while maintaining an elevated heart rate and toning other muscle groups before you get back to a leg-based move.
For a Karlie Kloss legs workout, replace the squat and lunge with more advanced exercises such as squat jumps and lunge jumps. Jumps are an advanced version that will add more intensity to the routine, increasing your heart rate, and burning more fat compared to simple lunges or squats.
The squat jumps will activate your abs, hamstrings, glutes, the inner and outer thigh, and lower back — basically your whole core and lower body.
These jumping exercises are considered “plyometrics” and are more advanced, but will work wonders for leaning down your thigh area and helping you build super models’ legs.
Will Lunges and Squats Make Your Thighs Bigger or Smaller?
It’s possible for your thighs to actually get bigger when you implement lunges and squats in your workout. That’s especially true if you exercise with added weight, such as with dumbbells or a weight bar.
That’s why super models aim to lower their overall body-fat percentage by following lean body workouts, such as those we offer on the Mission Lean app. Your goal should be to follow aerobic based workouts that keep your heart rate elevated while at the same time toning your muscles. By combining these workouts with a nutrition plan revolving around healthy calories from complex carbs, healthy fat, and lean protein you can get super model legs in no time.
Our Favorite Workout for Model Legs
Our favorite exercises for super model legs are the lunge jump and the squat jump, as previously mentioned.
These plyometric exercises appear throughout many of the workouts we offer through the Mission Lean app. The lunge jump will tone your quads and hamstrings, while squat jumps will tone your thigh muscles and butt.
Combine these with your favorite ab or upper body exercises, and move from the lunge jump right into one of those. Then go back to the squat jump. Then to an ab or arms exercise again. Then back into lunge jumps, and repeat. You’ll be living in a model’s body before you know it.
A workout that includes squat jumps will provide a solid foundation for strength-building, muscle toning, and cardiovascular fitness.
A perfect Mission Lean model legs workout consists of:
- High Knees. Do 20 on each side, and get your knees as high as possible. Don’t forget to keep your back straight.
- Butt Kicks. Do 10 for each leg. Run forward while kicking your legs behind you. Try and kick your glutes!
- Side Hop. Do 8 hops on each side, and go as far as you can. Immediately go for the next hop without stopping.
- Squat Jumps. Do 8 reps. Get as low as you can, and then explode upwards in a powerful jump.
- Mountain Climbers. Do 8 reps. Cross opposite knee to opposite elbow while keeping your body straight.
- Lunge Jumps. Do 8 lunge jumps on each side. Try and jump as high as you can, and then go low by positioning one knee close to the ground.
Notice how the squat jumps and lunge jumps are included in the final moves of the workout. This is done intentionally, in order to warm up the body first with less intensive moves. Before you complete lunge jumps and squat jumps, make sure your body is fully warmed up to minimize the risk of hurting yourself.
Model Legs Workout Fitness: How to Do It
Running will be part of your model legs workout. There’s simply no way around it. Look at any super model out there — their legs are lean and toned. The fastest and best way to get there is to opt for the treadmill.
If you have some time in the gym to allocate to cardio, skip the elliptical and the bike, and head directly to the treadmill.
Start your workout routine with 10-15 minutes of running on the treadmill. If you lack the stamina, jog or power walk until you build your fitness to the point where you can maintain a good running tempo throughout the treadmill session. Sooner or later, you’ll have to do some running. As we’ve said, there’s no getting around it if you truly want to lean yourself down and achieve the model legs look.
Starting your workout with cardio will elevate your body temperature and heart rate right away, warming you up for any strength exercises you have planned for the rest of the routine.
Next, you are going to get into your strength and toning exercises. Make sure you include some plyometrics like squat jumps and lunge jumps and combine these in a bodyweight circuit with other activities that tone your arms and abs.
Create a routine of 6-8 strength and toning activities focused on different muscle groups, where you move from one exercise to the next without resting. After completing a full circuit, take a short break (usually 2 minutes is a good amount of time) and start over.
Aim for 3 repetitions of the circuit in total. We have many great routines on the Mission Lean app if you’re looking for inspiration.
To focus on getting super model legs, start with a leg exercise like squat jumps or lunge jumps, and then move on to another muscle group (let’s say abs) before going back to a different leg exercise.
The idea is to alternate between exercises and rest your leg muscles without taking actual breaks. This way, you’ll focus on your legs without neglecting other parts of your body and you’ll keep your heart rate elevated to get a great aerobic workout.
Don’t forget the run at the beginning of your workout. You’ll be gassed by the end, but the additional cardio will work wonders for getting your legs lean and toned.
Get Model Legs With a Diet and Body Recalibration
To lean down your legs quickly so they’re super model lean, you want to control your appetite and only eat when your hunger is pressing.
Take note of how hungry you actually are. If you wait until your appetite is pressing, you will recalibrate your body and condition it to eat only when it needs to.
When you recognize you are hungry, wait an additional hour or two before you actually eat. Maybe grab yourself an apple, pear, nectarine, or peach at the moment when you feel your stomach growling instead of going for a full meal right away.
By nourishing your body with a piece of fruit instead of satisfying your hunger immediately, you will be tapping into fat stores and training your body to run on less.
Proper nutrition, combined with a solid workout like the one we’ve described above, will set you on the right path towards super models’ legs.
Model legs nutrition is about controlling your hunger and appetite by working out in the right way and timing your meals in coordination with your workouts. That being said, eating healthy, nutritious food will only help your efforts.
Check out Mission Lean for some great lean body recipes you can start eating right away and get yourself on the fast track towards model legs!
Lyuda is an ACE Certified Personal Trainer and Fitness Nutrition Specialist. Before creating Mission Lean, she worked as a model in New York and Miami. Her experience in the fashion industry, with its size pressures and expectations, inspired her to develop a nutrition and fitness program that was healthy and sustainable in order to maintain a lean physique.