Hi Nsmall! Welcome to the forums. Thanks for joining us. It's nice meet you here. You will find our Cathlete community very helpful and supportive.
You have already gotten great advice so I will give you a few more details to add to your plate. Keep in mind that what you eat and how much you eat is just as important as your exercise program. The two components go hand and hand and you really need to do both to get your best overall results. So try to eat 5 to 6 smaller meals a day (spaced every 2 to 3 hours apart) and eat foods that are nutrient dense and foods that are in their most natural unprocessed state. Drink lots of water daily to help flush waste and toxins out of the body and keep all the systems in the body working optimally.
Also, keep in mind when you first start an exercise program, there is a lot of muscle repair occurring and that makes the muscles temporarily swell with water. Many people will panic when they see this weight gain (anywhere from 2 to 6 pounds) thinking they are going the wrong direction in their fitness approach, but again, this is only temporary and the extreme soreness that accompanies it (DOMS…Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) will eventually get less and less with time.
As for what type of workouts you should do… You will find that each person's body responds differently to individual workout programs so it’s hard to give the exact answer to you without some experimentation on your part. However, generally speaking, a person looking to achieve what you have mentioned you would like to would do best with endurance based leg workouts. I would say to keep your leg workouts challenging but with moderate to heavier weight. Nothing too heavy. Every now and then you can do a heavy leg workout to shock the leg muscles differently and stimulate muscle fibers differently but overall stick with highly challenging lower body endurance based workouts. Keep in mind if you go too light, you will not get great results either. Your body will get too used to that and your results will slow down very quickly. Each workout truly needs to be a challenge. The workouts I recommend for your legs are “Butts and Guts”, “Leaner Legs”, and “Legs and Glutes”. I would also incorporate one running workout each week for about 30 to 40 minutes. The running workout should always be different…. sometimes fast/slow interval, sometimes long and steady, sometimes hills.
Along with these leg workouts you also need to incorporate upper body conditioning and cardio conditioning. For upper body conditioning I would recommend Pyramid Upper Body for now and then you can add on others as soon as you no longer get as sore or challenged as you initially did (when you do this for very first time that will be in about three weeks) . For cardio I would recommend MMA Kickbox, MMA Boxing, and Kick Punch and Crunch (which will be included in your Leg and Glutes DVD). You may also want to do Cardio and Weights since that will only have upper body weights mixed in with your step cardio. I would hold off on plyometric workouts for now until you get a stronger foundation built up within your joints, tendons, ligaments and muscles. I mention more about plyometric workouts below. Of course you want to work your core too and you will get that worked very well in many of the workouts I have listed for you.
What to do and how often to do it: Do two leg workouts and one running workout three non-consecutive days a week. Do one to two more cardio workouts per week. Do one or two upper body conditioning workouts per week. Occasionally you can do a heavy workout in place of one leg endurance based workout (such as Gym Style Legs). You can also do a leg based plyometric workout in place of an endurance leg workout every 7 to 10 days too. Plyometric leg workouts done in moderation (ie: 30 minutes once a week) will not bulk legs ...and even then they won’t bulk legs unless done in extremes (ie 3 or more times per week) and most often only by a person who is prone to build muscles very easily. So do not fear plyometric leg workouts when you are better conditioned (once there try our HIIT DVD). They are excellent for metabolic stimulation, high calorie burn, fat loss, breaking fitness plateaus, supporting bone density and enhancing athletic performance.
A one month rotation for you could look like this:
WEEK ONE:
Mon: MMA Boxing
Tues: Butts and Guts
Wed: Steady State Run
Thurs: OFF
Fri: Kick Punch and Crunch
Sat: Pyramid Upper Body
Sun: Leaner Legs
WEEK TWO:
Mon: MMA Kickbox
Tues: OFF
Wed: Butts and Guts
Thurs: Pyramid Upper Body
Fri: Steady State Run
Sat: Cardio and Weights
Sun: Legs and Glutes
WEEK THREE:
Mon: OFF
Tues: Running fast/slow
Wed: Leaner Legs
Thurs: Pyramid Upper Body
Fri: MMA Boxing
Sat: Cardio and Weights
Sun: OFF
WEEK FOUR:
Mon: Running Hills
Tues: MMA Kickbox
Wed: Legs and Glutes
Thurs: Pyramid Upper Body
Fri: MMA Boxing
Sat: OFF
Sun: Cardio and Weights
I just finished of Fitness Freak's Getting Ready for Summer 2010 (she also has a 2009 version).