Men’s Health/Eric Rosati
You’re deep into your quarantine workout split, and the time has rolled around for another leg day session. What are you doing? The answer is probably lots and lots of squats.
There’s nothing wrong with that, at least to start. Squats are the meat and potatoes of leg day for a reason, after all—you’ll hit your quads, hamstrings, and more, depending on how you load the move, and even just holding the position can work wonders for your posture and more. But if all you’re doing is squatting, you’re missing out on potential gains and possibly building up imbalances by working in just one plane of movement.
“When it comes to bodyweight training, sometimes you need the help of a trainer to give you variations that aren’t just squats or lunges,” says trainer Charlee Atkins, C.S.C.S. She advocates for home leg day sessions that are more than just squatathons.
“For lower body training, keep in mind we need to be doing knee dominant and hip dominant exercises to keep us balanced,” she continues. “Knee dominant usually means quads, while hip dominant often means glutes and hams.”
Atkins advocates that you make your no-equipment home workouts harder by switching to one side at a time. “Do the unilateral version,” she says. “For example, squats become split squats, while deadlifts or goodmornings become single leg deadlifts.”
Atkins also mentions that you shouldn’t neglect your glutes and hamstrings if you’re doing a ton of bodyweight squats. “When it comes to bodyweight workouts, we tend to put ourselves in hip flexion a lot,” she says. “Make sure you’re balancing out your exercise routines with hip dominant exercises: hamstring walk outs, good mornings, and hip raises (single leg hip raises).”
Try this quick bodyweight leg day series that puts all of Atkin’s principles into practice.
Perform each exercise for 45 seconds, the rest for 15 seconds.
Repeat the series for 3 rounds for a 15 minute workout. To really break the plane, Atkins suggests taking some of the exercises at a different angle. “That means get out of the frontal [side-to-side movement] and sagittal planes [straight up-and-down or front-to-back movement] and add some rotation,” she says. Try this for lateral squats, lateral lunges, and sumo squats.
Want to learn more moves from Atkins? Check out our series full of her workout tips, Try Her Move. You can also take on her new 30 day challenge in our streaming All Out Studio app, check out her Le Sweat workout app, and follow her on Instagram to find out when she’s hosting live workouts from her living room.
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