Six Challenging Leg Exercises That Require No Equipment
Whether you are a seasoned gym-goer or a couch potato, you’ve heard the saying, “don’t skip leg day.” Your legs are the heaviest part of your body and contain the largest muscles in your body, which means exercising them burns the most calories. Not to mention that your legs carry you everywhere you go, pick things up, and help you get back up when you fall.
Most people think you need to go to the gym and lift some weights or ride some cardio equipment for an hour to get your legs working, but this is not the case. There are many challenging lower body exercises that require no weight and almost no space. I decided to feature two exercises from each category of leg exercises that I made up for this article. These six exercises can be done anywhere and will only take a few minutes, click on the name of the exercise for an instructional video:
Quads and Glute Focused
Squats With a Pause: perform a regular squat and when you reach the bottom of the movement pause. The longer you pause, the more difficult the exercise will be.
Single-Leg Squat: Make sure to have a stable chair to sit down onto. On one leg, lower yourself slowly to the chair with control, do not let gravity do the work for you. Once seated, stand up strong on the leg you are balancing on.
Hamstring and Glutes Focused
Single-Leg Bridge: Start lying on your back with one foot flat on the ground, and the other straight out. Raise your hips until there is a straight line from your knees to your butt, and your shoulders. Squeeze your glutes and lower slowly back to the ground.
Advanced Bridge: Start with your heels about four inches apart and your big toes together.The location of your heels with intact the difficulty. If they are close to your body, it will be easier if they are further away, it will be harder. Then perform a bridge.
Everything Focused
Side Lunge: There are a lot of ways to perform a side lunge, and they are all great. The video shows a challenging variation, for a less challenging version, start and finish every repetition in a wide stance and keep your feet on the ground the whole time.
Bulgarian Split Squat: This is a personal favorite; as far as lunge variations go, this one is the best. In this exercise, we are performing a lunge with a larger range of motion by raising your back foot off the ground.
These exercises and many more can be found in The Desk Job Survival Guide. Check it out:
Also, for more equipment-less exercises check out the build your own workout article on this site. It features tons of different exercises divided up by real categories :)