If you’ve been working from home for a while, or haven’t been able to do your normal sports or gym classes – your muscles are probably starting to feel the effect.
When we don’t move our bodies, our muscles tend to disengage – making them weaker and less toned.
It’s so important to give your lower-body some special attention when you workout – and it’s really easy to do that from home. You don’t need heavy weights or special equipment.
Your lower-body contains your strongest muscle (the gluteus maximus, which make up the bulk of the butt cheek), along with the muscles in the thighs, hips and legs – they all play a massive part in your overall stability, posture, strength and ability to exercise and perform everyday physical tasks.
If the muscles in the lower body are not strong, it can lead to knee pain when you exercise, lower back pain and all kinds of other aches and niggles.
We want our lower-bodies as strong as possible, so Annie Edmonds, studio owner and head female coach at F45 Maida Vale has shared her favourite home workout with moves that are simple (but not easy).
All you need is a chair and any available weight – like a dumbbell, kettlebell or a weighted backpack.
Warm-up
2.5 – 5 minutes
It can’t be stressed enough that a warm-up should be conducted before any form of weight-bearing or bodyweight exercises.
Do the following moves for a total of 20-40 seconds each:
– Jog with high knees on the spot or skipping rope
– Squat jumps
– Running on the spot kicking the bum
– Place the hands on the head and crunch the elbow and knee together either side
– Place your hand at shoulder height and kick the opposite foot to the hand on both sides
– Burpees
– Star jumps
The workout
25 – 30 minutes
Perform each exercise for 45 seconds of work with a 15-second rest in between each set.
Give each leg 45 seconds when there is a single-leg exercise.
After completing all five exercises, take 1 minute of rest and repeat this again 4 more times.
Single-leg Bulgarian split squat
Focus: quadriceps, glutes
This can be done either holding a weight or with bodyweight only.
Place one foot back on a stable chair, you can lay the foot flat or come up onto the toe, depending on your balance and preference.
Step your other leg out in front, ensuring there is enough distance between the leg and the chair so that lowering down will not force the knee too far over the front foot.
Lower the body down under control ensuring your knee stays stable.
Once you are lowered down, distribute the weight through your front foot (you should be able to wiggle the toes still in this position), and drive up through the front leg.
Repeat for the duration of the set on that leg, then change legs and repeat.
Single-leg hip thrusts
Focus: hamstrings
Lay on the floor in front of the chair and place your heels onto it, ensuring your body remains fairly close to give you a good range of motion.
Take one leg and raise it up straight, keeping the knees in line. Using the leg that remains on the chair, lift the body off the floor leaving only the shoulders down, and raise your bum up as high as you can while keeping one leg raised.
Lower the body back down to the floor and for maximum effect, do not let the body touch the floor before raising back up.
Weighted good mornings into squat
Focus: hamstrings, quadriceps, glutes)
Hold a weight at your chest and take a hip-width stance with the feet, the way you would begin a regular squat.
Lean forward from the hips, keeping a small (micro) bend in the knees, while bringing the chest down with the weight. This will protect the lower back and ensure you hit the hamstrings at the back of the legs.
Come back up to standing and immediately go into a squat, keeping the weight on the chest.
In your squat, imagine you are about to sit on an imaginary chair and push the bum back to ensure your knees are not tracking past your toes.
Frog squats
Focus: quadriceps
Take a shoulder-width stance with your feet. You may like to point your toes slightly outward, but the main thing is to ensure the knees are not twisting in any way.
Sit down as deep as you can in this position between the legs, placing your elbows on the inside of the knees.
Once here, raise the bum up slightly and then lower it down. You want the raise to be just enough so that the legs do not straighten in the top position.
Keep this up, raising and lowering and try and go for the entire 45 seconds.
You can regress the movement by placing your hands on the floor in front of you but keep raising and lowering.
Weighted sumo squat pulses
Focus: inner thigh/abductors, glutes
This can be done with a weight or with bodyweight only.
Take the widest stance you have yet, just past shoulder-width. You may want to point the toes slightly outwards, but the main objective is to ensure your knees are not twisting away from the feet.
Hold the weight at the chest and drop down low until you can feel your inner thighs engaging. Go as low as you can without feeling discomfort, the aim is to test yourself.
When you are in the lower end of the movement, pulse up and down ensuring not to come up to standing position until the set is done.
Stay low at all times.
Cool down aerobic exercise
5 minutes
If time allows, you may wish to perform up to five minutes of aerobic exercise after the above is complete like a short run or brisk walk, achieving around 65-75% of your maximum heart rate.
With the elevated heart rate comes increased blood flow and oxygenation to the blood, lowering the risk of blood pooling in the lower body after the workout and even helping to reduce the risk of varicose veins. If there is no time for that, you must do the following:
Cool-down with stretches
5 minutes
To get the maximum benefit out of your lower-body session, conduct 3-5 minutes of cool-down stretches at the end.
Include the quads, glutes, hamstrings and inner thighs in the stretches, conducting each stretch for up to 30 seconds.
This will assist your heart rate in coming down gradually in order to relieve the build-up in muscle tension, increase overall flexibility and reduce the risk of getting Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS) in the days to come.
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