Improve your pins with these pro tips!

While most men spend much of their training time focusing on the muscles above the waist (chest, arms, back), let’s face it, women are often more concerned with the bits below the waist. Whether you want to run faster, get stronger, or look amazing in a short skirt, leg work probably takes up a large chunk of your time in the gym.

If that’s the case, you’re in luck, because over the past few years, we’ve spent a lot of time talking to the owners of arguably the best pairs of pins in the fitness business. Here are her secrets to strong, sexy legs.

• Since your upper body and gravity already offer resistance during leg training, you can increase the intensity of squats, lunges, and similar movements in ways other than simply lifting weights. A great way to build intensity is to slow your pace from, say, a normal two or three count to a five count on the way down. If you want to get radical, you can even stop a few times for a few seconds, descending in steps.

• If you do unilateral exercises and find that one leg is stronger than the other, train the weak leg first and let it determine how much weight you use and how many repetitions it completes. On the leg press, for example, if you can do 10 reps with your right leg and 15 with your left, do 10 for both until your right leg catches up.

• When you squat and lunge, focus on keeping your glutes contracted. People often envision them as leg-only exercises, because that’s where the movement happens, but the glutes handle much of the load. Squeeze your muscles throughout the exercise.

• People often debate whether to get back up from squats immediately or pause for a second or two at the bottom, but the best strategy for most types of squats is an intermediate technique called “springback” that not a huge bounce, but enough so that the change of direction uses some of the elastic energy transfer in your body.

• Try something different each time you train legs. Everything you can think of. Never stagnate.

• Mix up your leg training as much as possible. This is almost as important as rest when it comes to allowing your muscles to recover from workout to workout. If you don’t want to dedicate entire month-long cycles to, say, heavy leg training, throw a heavy leg day into the mix every once in a while. The response of everything from your central nervous system to your growth hormones will be different on that day, and you’ll be less likely to stagnate as a result.

• The biggest mistake beginners make is training their legs too often. If they’re training according to a body part division, most women don’t really need to train their legs more than once every five days or so. If you are an athlete and your legs are used to more stimulation, your frequency could be 3 days or so.

• Do a lot of cardio. Running and stair climbing in particular are not only good for cardiorespiratory endurance, but also for sculpting your legs and glutes. Increase the focus on your glutes by taking two steps at a time to increase the angle of hip extension.

• In squats and lunges, always keep your knees in line with your feet. Once your knees move forward, they are in a compromised position that can lead to injury. Also, don’t fail these exercises until you’ve mastered proper technique.

• Don’t avoid leg exercises just because they feel uncomfortable or difficult at first. Is the leg extension easier to master than the lunge? Absolutely. Does that mean you shouldn’t bother with lunges? Absolutely not. Because lunges require you to use more than one set of joints, recruit a lot more auxiliary muscles, and require more balance, they’ll be harder to do at first—it’s the nature of the beast. That’s why you should be doing them, not avoiding them.