Regularly incorporating lunges as part of your fitness routine will increase the lean muscle mass in your legs, but spot reduction of fat is not possible. To thin your legs, exercise regularly and follow an eating plan that maintains a healthy balance between nutrients and calories. You'll lose weight all over your body, including your legs. And if you've been performing lunges regularly, the increased muscle in your legs will be revealed.
Lunge Focus
Your quadriceps and hamstrings are targeted by lunges. You also use your core muscles and gluteal muscles -- the muscles of your bottom -- heavily in the exercise. The quadriceps is the group of four muscles that compose the front of the thigh. The hamstrings are the muscles that make up the back of the thigh. Increasing the length of your stance targets more of your gluteal muscles; a shorter stance targets your quadriceps.
Losing Weight
Losing weight at a steady pace of 1 to 2 lbs. per week requires healthy eating habits that you'll maintain once the weight is off. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, recommends this pace of weight loss for long-term health. The basic premise of weight loss is expending more calories than you consume. Strength training, such as doing lunge exercises, is one healthy way to expend calories.
Lunge Basics
Form is critical to a proper lunge. It ensures that you don't damage your knee or lower back. When completing a lunge, stand with your feet hip-width apart, brace your core to support your back and step forward. Descend until your back leg almost touches the floor. To avoid potential knee problems, ensure that your front knee does not extend beyond your toes. Rise back to standing and step back to your starting position. If balance is an issue, step forward into lunge position and maintain your foot position as you complete your lunges. Remember to switch legs to work out both legs.
If a regular lunge is getting old, try a few variations. These include traveling lunges, where you step forward one foot a time, working both legs; balance beam lunges, where you line up your feet as if standing on a beam to target more of the gluteus medius; and back lunges, where you step back into the lunge instead of forward.
Exercise Pace and Frequency
Work out at a vigorous cardiovascular pace for 150 minutes a week and strength train twice per week to maintain your weight, recommends the CDC. To lose bodyweight and thin your legs, you need to exercise this much at the same time as decreasing the amount of calories you consume.
