Blast Your Legs Anywhere With This Equipment-Optional Workout
Keen to ensure that nobody has an excuse to skip leg day, Athlean-X expert Jeff Cavaliere C.S.C.S. just outlined a 20-minute leg workout that hits the anterior chain, posterior chain, quads, and the hips. The routine is super accessible in more than just its duration—in addition to demonstrating how to work the lower body with a dumbbell, Cavaliere explains how each move can be easily performed as a bodyweight exercise with no equipment whatsoever, making it possible to train your legs no matter where you are.
"You don't have to be overly reliant on the gym to get those leg gains if you know how to do it," he says.
The workout consists of 4 "APEX" circuits: a round of 3 exercises (anterior, posterior, explosive), followed by 30 seconds of rest, then 2 corrective exercises. Each exercise takes place in 30 second bursts. A beginner should do the movement for 15 seconds and then rest for 15, an intermediate exerciser should perform for 20 seconds and rest for 10, and the most advanced should do the move for 25 seconds and only rest for 5.
In APEX Circuit 1, the anterior exercise is an air squat, the posterior exercise is a bridge march, and for the explosive movement, Cavaliere recommends a bodyweight version of a kettlebell swing which recreates the same hinging motion.
The first corrective exercise is a horizontal lateral leg raise, better known as the Jane Fonda. "This is going to work that weak hip adductor," says Cavaliere, adding: "A lot of us do not strengthen this area enough." The second corrective is the 1 1/2 adductor slide.
Circuit 2 consists of the reverse lunge, sprinter lunge, and jump squats.
Circuit 3 starts with a never-ending squat: "The idea is simply never to come all the way to the top, to go all the way down to the bottom, and make sure that you're always keeping tension on your legs, never even giving them that brief reprieve at the top of a rep," says Cavaliere. He follows this with a bodyweight hamstring Romanian deadlift. "By hinging less at the hips and more forward at the waist, we're putting most of the work onto the hamstring rather than the glutes," he explains. Meanwhile the third move, the glute power RDL, focuses on hinging at the hips and places more of an overload on the glutes.
The fourth and final circuit reverse creeping lunge, long leg bridge, and sprinter plyo lunge.
"You can continue to push yourself here," he says. "You can either go for a longer time on each exercise, or pick up those weights and add weight as you go."
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