Thigh Exercises for All Age

Having healthy and strong thighs is essential for your health. Experts too highlight the importance of upper-leg exercises since people in these days spend much time sitting, leaving their thighs to regress. Lack of thigh muscles result in high possibility of falling and total joint replacement in long term. However, reckless training may result in injuries. Here are important things to keep in mind when you train your thighs.

1. Swimming, Cycling, Squatting, and Stair Climbing – choose your best fit
Squatting is known to be one of the best training methods for thighs. However, squatting can cause knee injuries, especially if you have degenerative arthritis or sarcopenia. It may also cause cartilage to wear off faster.
To prevent such negative effects of squatting, swimming is the best choice. Swimming the backstroke is especially good to train thighs without overusing or wearing the joints.
Cycling also is a effective thigh training method. However, slow-paced walking is not very helpful.

2. Do not overdo
This is important in all other workouts too, but especially when you’re training your muscles, overworking is the first thing to avoid. There is no set standard for overwork. Therefore, feeling “pumped” as your own standard and don’t go over this state. Going over this standard causes muscle fatigue, so try to work out through long-term and raise the standard.

3. Be persistent
Do we need to mention that nothing can be accomplished overnight? Continuous, long-term investigation of time is the key for healthy thigh muscle training. 30 minutes or more everyday is desirable.

4. Stretch and Heat
Many people do not pay much attention to warming up and cooling down. However, they are essential since sudden contraction of muscles can damage them. Invest more than 10 minutes before and after your muscle trainings to prevent damages.
Heating after workout is another way to cool down your muscles, promoting increased blood circulation.

Original document available from http://www.koreadaily.com/news/read.asp?art_id=4030922
Translated by Heewon Kim