This month, instead of bringing you my favorite things this month, I’m combining FitFriday and my Friday Favorites to share some of my favorite lower body exercises.
I did a workout earlier this week that contained these exercises plus a few more. The way I set it up was to focus on each muscle group of the lower body individually, working up the leg (calves-hamstrings-glutes-quads) and ending with squats. I picked my favorite exercise from each of those muscle groups to share with you today.
Calves
- Calf Raises
When I usually do calf raises I do variations of reps with my feet parallel and my feet turned out. This time, I added turning my feet in to work more of the muscle. Also, I decided to do this exercise on a step. Normally when doing calf raises I try not to let my heels touch the ground, but doing it on a step forces you to keep them off the ground!
To make this exercise easier, take it off the step.
To make it a bit more difficult, hold dumbbells during the exercise.
Hamsring
- Hamstring Curl with Ball
I did this exercise with a weighted stability ball. It made it just a little more difficult.
Glutes
- Donkey Kicks
This is not only my favorite glute exercise, but one of my favorite lower body exercises. For my workout this week I only did the basic donkey kick, but normally I do a different variation of this. The routine I normally do is 20 donkey kicks, 15 pulses on each side, both straight to the back, and out to the side. When going to the side I lift my leg in what some may call a “fire hydrant” position and from there, straighten my leg for the 15 pulses.
Quads
- Wall Sit
Wall sits are an exercise I’ve been doing for a long time. There was one day in my life that I actually held my wall sit for over 5 minutes. As much as I would like to set this as a goal to reach for in the near future, it’s going to take a lot of work to get there again!
What’s your best wall sit time? This is a great exercise to time yourself and see how long you can go. Planks are another exercise that you should do this with.
Share your favorite lower body exercises in the comments below!
