Unless you want to look like Mr. Incredible in the movies, you need to pay more attention to your leg days/ leg workouts.
Mr. Incredible may have a great upper body, but his legs are skinny (no offense, just being funny)
I would probably go out screaming in public, “don’t skip leg day.” Now, why would I go to that length of insanity? Because I want you to look good and stay healthy, that’s why.
There are several benefits of leg workouts that people often overlook. Through lower body workouts, you can train the major muscles of your body. Leg exercises can help accelerate your day-to-day movement and movement.
The lower body workout helps you improve many chronic cases like– arthritis, heart disease, and blood sugar levels.
Some more benefits of leg workouts would be–
- Hormone stimulation.
- Strength balance.
- It helps you to engage your core.
- It helps you build muscle.
Do these reasons seem convincing enough? Of course, but can you do leg workouts at home when you do not have good gym equipment? Yes, you can. Let’s see how.
Top Ten Best Leg Workouts
Keeping up with your leg days is immensely important for your overall health goal if you have a health target. Several leg workouts can easily fit within fifteen minutes of your regular workout session.
So, I have brought you the ten best leg workouts that you can include in your leg days. I have set up a parameter for choosing only the effective leg workouts. Here is the standard for the best leg day workouts for men and women–
- The workouts need to be easy to learn and practice.
- Stimulation of total muscle.
- Recommended by intense lifters and bodybuilders.
- Required equipment needs to be available in the commercial gyms.
Barbell Back Squats
Squats are probably the best leg workout that you can do. They are the most challenging workouts, and they help you strengthen all of your lower body muscles. In addition, this workout helps to spike muscle-building hormones to release. Barbell back squats are one of the best leg workouts for men.
If you want to improve your arm strength, a barbell back squat followed by curls makes a great combination for your lower body workouts. You can use the various high bar and low bar squats for the best results. Here are some variations that you can add to your routine–
- Barbell back squat.
- Back squat with bands.
- Back squat with chains.
- Barbell back squat to box.
Barbell Front Squat
Now moving towards the front of your body, the front squat completely changes the previous rhythm of your body. Again, the quad over your glutes and hams is this leg workout’s focus.
It is the best leg workouts exercise for maintaining a vertical torso position and increasing the depth position of your squats. In short, this leg exercise is good for decreasing lower back injury.
The front squats are the best upper back and core strength. You can lift half your body and do 20 reps of this exercise for impressive results. Here are the variations if you need to check them–
- Barbell front squat.
- Goblet squat.
- Frankenstein squat.
- Dumbbell front squat.
You need a brutal energy level, so I suggest you do them during the first sessions of your training.
Related Reading: Is Hyperbolic Stretching Legit? Here’s Our Review In 2022
Olympic Lifts: Snatches And Power Clean
Do you want to improve your jumping power for sports activities? Or your squat strength? In any of these cases, I would recommend doing Olympic squats. There are several variations of Olympic lifts that you can add to your leg workouts; for instance–
- Barbell power clean
- Barbell snatch
- Barbell hang clean
- Barbell snatch pull
- Barbell Hang snatch
- Barbell clean
You can add two to three reps of this exercise to your leg day session. So these lifts are good ones to start your leg workouts with.
Deadlifts
Deadlifts are among the best leg workouts for the whole body. Aside from your whole body workout, deadlifts are great for your legs. They hit the quads along with the quads and the glutes.
Some deadlift variations are as follows–
- Traditional deadlift
- Hybrid deadlift
- Sumo deadlift
- Trap-bar deadlift
- Kettlebell deadlift
Bodybuilders love doing deadlifts. If you put it in your regular exercise routine, it would be better to do six to seven reps in each set.
Bulgarian Split Squat
Bulgarian Split Squat helps you increase the range of motion to improve mobility. The single-sided set-setups help to build coordination and improve your bodily balance. In addition, it helps you to create smaller and stabilizing muscles. You can combine the Bulgarian split squat with the dumbbells. These leg workouts with dumbbells are a perfect exercise to get toned, fat-free muscular legs.
- Regular Split Squat.
- Elevated Single-Leg Hip Thrust.
- Single-Leg Hip Thrust.
- Reverse Lunge
Split Squat
You can simply do split squats to improve your leg’s health. If you are doing around four sets of this exercise, your testosterone response will improve massively. You can add 8 to 12 reps of split squats to your regular leg workout session. Here are some of the best variations that you can add to your routine–
- Barbell Bulgarian split squat
- Smith machine leg workouts
- Dumbbell split squat.
Hack Squat
Hack squats Emphasize the glutes and the hamstrings; the hack squats provide you with plenty of benefits for manipulating your leg movements. After you do your free weight exercises, you can do a hack squat. Doing three sets of 20 to 30 reps is enough. Here are some variations–
- Hack Squat
- Narrow stance hack squat
- Single-Leg Hack squat
Leg Press
The leg press is another one of the best workouts to provide you the variety in positioning your legs. This leg workout targets your outer quads, glutes, inner quads, and hamstrings. Doing 3 to 4 sets of 20 to 30 reps will be incredibly helpful for your body. Some worth doing variations would be–
- Leg press
- Wide stance leg press
- Narrow stance leg press
- Single leg press
Lunge
Lunge helps you improve the hip and your knee extensions stimulating your glutes and your thighs in the process. You need to use two dumbbells for doing this leg workout. A set of 8 to 20 reps is enough. Pendulum lunges and Bulgarian split both are perfect leg workouts with weights. But when you are combining the leg exercise routines with weights, always start with the small amounts of weights. Then shift to the higher weight value.
Here are some variations that you can add to your routine–
- Forward lunge
- Walking lunge
- Curtsy lunge
- Reverse lunge
Romanian Deadlifts
Romanian deadlifts specifically target the hamstrings. It strengthens your hips and the lower back of your body. You can lift lighter weights with more control if you keep up with Romanian deadlifts. Some variations that you can include in your routine are–
- Dumbbell Romanian deadlifts
- Barbell Romanian deadlifts
- Banded Dumbbell Romanian deadlifts
- Kettlebell Romanian deadlifts
Bottom Line
You should not be inconsiderate about your leg days if you value your overall health conditions. The ten leg day leg workouts that I have mentioned in this article are immensely helpful. You can add these leg workouts to your leg days for better results for your blower body health.
If you have any questions relating to the topic, you can ask us in the comment box.
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