Lean Legs | 10 Pound Dumbbells Will They Bulk Me Up

Lean Legs

This article, Lean Legs, 10 Pound Dumbbells Will They Bulk Me Up was created by an email I received from user name R. It was such a good question that I thought others would like to read it.

Here is the original email which is followed by my article…

Lean Legs Message:
I Want To Use 10 Pound Free Hand Weights Which Equals To 20 Pounds When You Add Them. I Want To Use Them For Lunges. I Am A Woman. I Want To Get Lean Legs. If I Use 10 Pound Dumbbells Will They Bulk Me Up And Get My Legs Bigger? I Weight 154 Pounds I Want To Lose Weight.
Thank you,
R – Lean Legs

Dear R – Lean Legs,
10 pound dumbbells will not bulk you up or get your legs bigger. Even heavier dumbbells will not bulk you up. The only way you will bulk up after any type of workout is when you have a caloric surplus which is eating more calories than required for your body to maintain its current weight.

Since you want to lose weight and develop lean legs, you must eat less calories. I’m guessing you want to keep the muscle you have while toning your legs without getting them bigger. For this, I suggest you go heavier with the weights for the dumbbells and perform different legs exercises for your workout.

The heavier the weight, the more calories you will burn in a shorter amount of time. By going heavier with the weight, you will be able to achieve lean legs and burn fat instead of muscle.

Whenever you workout with light weights for a long time, you run into the risk of burning muscle instead of fat. Yes, you will still lose weight by performing light weight workouts but, most of the weight lost will come from your muscle mass. I’m sure you want the weight which you will lose to be fat, not muscle. Performing heavy weight leg exercises will help with targeting fat loss instead of muscle loss by a process known as EPOC – Excess post-exercise oxygen consumption). Epoc has been known to burn a lot of calories after the workout is over. And the good news is that most of the calories that is burned afterwards comes from fat!

Lean Legs And 10 pound dumbbells

If you only have the two 10 pound dumbbells available then I would suggest performing leg exercises that involve one leg to workout for your lean legs. Example…

Step ups: a great fat burning and leg toning exercise.
One leg squat: one leg elevated while performing the squat, great for core activation.
One leg calf raise.
Bulgarian squat: one leg place on a chair behind you while you squat down.
Explosive lunges = alternating jumping lunge: uses more energy and calories to perform, which will equal more fat burned and leaner legs.

Lean Legs – Targeting Different Areas Of Your Legs

By performing different leg exercises, you can target different areas of the leg and really get your legs toned and defined. Plus, you will be able to burn more calories when you get more muscle groups involved.

When you perform a series of different leg exercises in a circuit, two things will happen…

You will be able to burn more calories in a shorter amount of time, which will create that EPOC effect.
Lean and toned legs will be developed by targeting different areas of the muscle.

Also, by manipulating the following times of the workout…

duration of the exercise
rest time between exercises
rest time between sets

…you can control how much calories you will burn.

Lean Legs – Example Of A Circuit Workout

Here is an example of a circuit workout by using the 10 pound dumbbell one leg exercises listed above…

Alternating Step Ups = 30 seconds
rest = 30 seconds
Alternating Bulgarian Squat = 30 seconds
rest = 30 seconds
Alternating Jumping Lunge = 30 seconds
rest = 30 seconds
Alternating One Leg Squat = 30 seconds
rest = 30 seconds
Alternating One Leg Calf Raise = 30 seconds
rest = 30 seconds

Then repeat for a total of 4 times to equal 20 minutes.

Lean Legs Final Thought

This is a great beginning workout to burn a lot of fat, tone up and get lean legs. There are 4 different variables you can change in order to increase the difficultly of this workout…