You know those super handy sliders you use to move furniture around your house? They are also super handy for leg day! I used them today to help incorporate some abs and cardio bursts with some heavy machine weights and deep ROM movements.
Exercises:
TRX Lunge – step backwards and alternate legs. This is part of the warmup, so take it slow and focus on form and sinking as deep as you can into your lunge.
TRX Squat Jump – just like a regular squat jump except you are almost jumping at a backwards angle so the TRX straps are always taut.
Leg Extension – this machine is often red carded for people with knee problems, but I find ways around it because it is so important to strengthen our muscles around our knee (ie quads) to help support our joint!! Keep your foot flexed, not pointed. Don’t lock out your leg, but go until your leg is almost straight. If your knees are still being tough, start with a very light weight.
Glider Mountain Climbers – the ultimate cardio burst. The gliders help me feel this exercise more in my hip flexors because they are constantly working to pull the gliders through the motion
Leg Curl – I prefer the laying leg curl that our gym has. I position my knee so it is slightly off the bench and curl up, squeezing that booty. You might also feel it in your lower back or calves.
Glider Backward Lunges – Use a glider under one foot, that’s the foot that is going backwards. Keep your torso upright. Be sure both your knees are bending, and as I always say with lunges, lunge DOWN, not backward (ie leg goes back and bends, but the torso sink straight down towards the floor). This helps protect your knees.
Low Leg Press – using the machine at our gym, I set the safety catch the lowest position and try to bottom out each time. This is helping me to increase my ROM. One of my goals this year is to sit deeper in my squats, so this exercise directly relates to that. Plus when you go even lower here, you get a little more booty work!
Glider Pikes – this one can be tricky, and you almost need to generate momentum to get that booty up. Imagine a puppet string coming from your butt that is pulling you towards the ceiling. Ya, that’s the perfect form.
Key:
< denotes a superset. Do the two exercises back to back with no rest in between. After both are completed, rest, and then go again until your two to three sets are complete.
An “s” after a weight denotes x amount of weight on either side of the bar or x amount of weight in each hand (ie. for leg press I put a 45 on each side of the machine).
**Workouts are written for me or my clients, so adjust weights and intensity according to your individual body’s ability.
Amber Launstein 