Exercising your lower body does much more than tone your glutes, build leg muscles, and strengthen your calves. While training the lower half of your body can help you accomplish all of the above, exercising your legs can also help in the process of strengthening your joints and maintaining good bone health.
But if you’re short on time and uninspired by your current lower-body sessions, check out this personal trainer’s five-move leg that can be completed in just 15 minutes using a set of best adjustable dumbbellsbars and a leg extension machine.
krissy cella (opens in a new tab)fitness expert and co-founder of the evolve (opens in a new tab) training app, guides you through a variety of compound movements that will help you exercise multiple muscles at once. If you’re training at home, you can adapt the movements to use just the dumbbells.
These exercises will test some of the largest muscles in the body, such as the gluteus maximus, quads, and hamstrings. So if you’re ready to turn on your pump, read on.
Watch Krissy Cela’s five-move workout
Cela’s training includes some of the best leg workout training. From squats, or a variation of them, to leg extensions, single-leg Russian deadlifts, and inverted lunges, the fitness trainer includes moves that put your lower body into overdrive.
The five moves you’ll need to master for this workout include:
- Pause Squats: 1 rep with a 4 second hold x 6 reps/4 sets
- Single Leg RDL: 12 reps x 4 sets on each leg
- Reverse lunge: 12 reps x 4 sets with each leg
- Leg extension: 10 reps each with a 10 second hold
- Sumo Squats – 8 reps x 4 sets
Whether you’re new to exercise or in the process of expanding your lower leg exercises, in this 15-minute workout, Cela shows you how to perform each move, as well as offering some modifications to how you might perform these exercises with a different type of weight, either a dumbbell or using your own body weight.
Cela also shares information about which muscles each exercise targets and an explanation of what’s happening in your body while you perform these moves. For example, you may be wondering why Cela has chosen to include pause squats.
“That pause is going to completely ruin your legs,” explains Cela. “That time under tension will significantly increase that lactic acid throughout your leg, giving you that pump you love so much.”
But before you start these moves, the fitness expert recommends completing some dynamic moves to warm up your limbs, joints, and muscles before putting them through any form of resistance training.
She says, “Dynamic movements focus on lubricating and warming up your muscles and joints and slightly increasing your heart rate and getting blood circulating throughout your body, preparing you for much heavier movements.”
To learn more ways to train your lower body, or how to do squats check out our handy step-by-step guides or take this 30 day leg challenge.
