These basic workouts are simple but very effective for toning your leg and buttocks from anywhere in your home.
Legs are an essential part of any physical activity. Keeping your legs in shape is within everyone’s reach. It’s just a matter of doing a few simple leg exercises that focus on the different muscle groups that make up the lower body to strengthen, tone and slim your legs without leaving your home and without any equipment.
For those who are not very athletic, these five exercises can be performed twice a week in three sets of ten repetitions. For those with a more established routine, four sets of 15 repetitions would be ideal. Between exercises, it is advisable to rest between 30 and 60 seconds, depending on the body.
Here are five easy workouts you can do at home to tone up your legs.
1- Basic Squat
The squat is one of the most popular and useful exercises for working your legs without using much space or equipment. This simple movement consists of bending your knees to a 45 degree angle. A well-executed squat strengthens the legs, glutes, and many other lower body muscles, helping to improve flexibility and keep joints and bones in good shape. However, poorly executed squats can lead to lower back and knee problems, so it is very important to get them right.
It is important to start from a comfortable standing position, with feet shoulder-width apart, and gradually move to a motion like sitting on a chair, keeping the abdominal muscles active and the legs tensed. It is important to avoid pulling the knees inward or shifting the weight of the body too far forward or backward. As a general rule, the knees should not go beyond the tips of the toes when performing the bend, but people with good ankle mobility may feel comfortable in this position and the exercise would not be poorly performed.
This exercise can be repeated as many as 20 times.
2- Sumo Squat
This variation of the previous exercise helps to focus the work on the gluteal muscles and is performed using the same technique as the basic squat, but with the feet wider apart. As the name suggests, the Sumo Squat is inspired by the position of sumo wrestlers during their matches. As you bend your knees, it is important to keep your back straight and contract your abdomen and glutes to activate the muscles you want to work. When descending, it is important not to pull the knees inward, just as when ascending, to avoid injury to this joint. Breathing is also important in this exercise, we must take in air, hold it during the descent and expel it during the ascent.
This workout can be performed with weights to intensify the work and add upper torso activation to muscles such as the dorsalis, trapezius, shoulders, or arms, since the weight, usually a kettlebell, is held with the arms extended between the legs.
Perform this exercise for 15 repetitions.
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3- Abduction with rubber band
This exercise strengthens the inner thighs and is based on performing leg extensions from a seated position. This movement can be performed simply with the resistance offered by the body, or you can add a rubber band or a short band to add resistance to the movement and thus work with greater intensity.
When performing the movement, it is important to keep the back straight, without bending it, to avoid lumbar problems and to concentrate the effort on the glutes and the inner and outer thighs.
Perform 15 repetitions of this exercise
4- Lunge
Lunge is an exercise in which you step forward or backward and bend your knees until the one behind you approaches or touches the ground. There are many variations of this movement, depending on the muscle you want to focus on, but the basic one focuses on the quadriceps and glutes and consists of lowering the knee straight to the floor.
From a vertical position, step forward, keeping the torso as straight as possible and perpendicular to the ground throughout the movement, avoiding swinging as much as possible. Once the front foot is supported, continue down, taking care that the forward leg does not bend more than 90º at the knee.
Continue to do this exercise for 20 repetitions.
