“Don’t skip leg day”! I’m sure many have heard this or a variation of it all over social media. You may be happy to know that in order to get a proper leg workout in, there is no need for any expensive equipment. There are plenty of options with lower body calisthenics exercises that gives you the freedom to get the leg workout your need anytime and anywhere.
This is beneficial to those who are looking to exercise in their home gym or just have limited space and time to make it out to the gym. Not having to rely on certain elements in order to ensure you get your workout gives you more of a likelihood to actually workout when you have planned to.
Some of the reasons why lower body calisthenic exercises could be off put is simply because exercise and technique is not widely known. It can become so much easier when you know what is available to you and take the opportunity to build out your own lower body workout plan.
Can You Get A Good Lower Body Exercise With Calisthenics?
Calisthenics is a form of exercise in which you only use your own bodyweight as the form of resistance. Using zero equipment usually means you would need to get a bit creative with your workouts. Or you can just follow what we found below.
Being creative means finding the right workout that can help you target the areas you want to work on. Often times they are movement based types of workouts that would help boost agility, flexibility as well as joints.
With the high amount of bodyweight exercises you can do, calisthenics provides a great source of lower body exercises. Aside from how effective the exercises are, what makes them a good choice is how versatile it can be. For starters, always being able to fit it in your busy schedule is a plus. There are some exercises you can utilize while you do chores, during a run, or even warm ups and cool downs.
Whichever way you decide to do it, you giving yourself an exercise that promotes functional strength and range of motion in your body.
To make this a bit more digestible, we found exercises that are better suited for specific areas of the body. And broke them down into their respective categories. Ranging from the upper, mid and lower parts of your body.
Having these choices available could help plan more fulfilling workouts and piece together a structure that works for you.
Bodyweight Exercises For Calves
Calf Raises
Try this when you’re warming up for an exercise or cooling down from one. Continuously raise yourself to your tippy toes and back down. You can do this 10-20 times before going on to the next exercise. It’s also something you can do while waiting in line, in between chores or just need a quick leg workout fix.
Butt Kicks
Butt kicks brings an element of cardio to your leg exercises. It similar to running on the spot, but more focussed with leg workout. While standing in one spot, make a running motion by lifting one heal as close as you can to your buttocks and bringing it back down and alternate with your other leg. Do this continuously as if you were running in the same spot.
Pistol Squats
This exercise puts a lot of emphasis on the joints in your knees. If you have a bad knee, or don’t feel comfortable doing it on its own. Feel free to get assistance by leaning on a wall or using something around your home to hold on to. If this is your first time, I would highly recommend you do just that.
While alternating legs and starting with one leg. Lower yourself as much as possible bending your knee close to ninety degrees with one leg, and having your other leg straight and pointed away from you. Perform 5 of these and switch to your next leg. It is advised to have at least a low enough chair to perform this over, in order to have something to catch you if needed.
Bodyweight Exercises For Thighs
Sumo Walks
As silly as you may look while doing this, trust that you are getting a great workout that engages your quads, glutes and core. In doing this exercise you are combining half squats and walking. Essentially you want to resemble a sumo wrestler by keeping your feet wide apart and in squat position, as you step forward you also will be performing half squats. When doing this, keep your knees bent, take 4 steps forward and 4 steps back.
Switching Lunges
Here’s another exercise that gives you a touch of cardio. It is easy make this a workout that happens quickly, but it is important to consciously slow your movements down and really focus on working the leg areas. To perform this exercise, you want to alternate performing a lunge with each leg simultaneously. After doing the lunge on on’e leg, quickly make a small jump and switch to the opposite leg.
Squat Side Leg Raises
This exercise is also nice to increase mobility. To perform this, do a normal squat as usual. On the way up you want to lift one leg out to this side (keeping it straight) as much as you can. Bring it back down, squat again and alternate to the next leg. Focus on form instead of speed.
Bodyweight Exercises For Glutes
Squats
One of the simple and basic glutes exercises out there. Easy and non intrusive enough to do while watch a show or just waiting for the water to boil. Starting from a standing position squat down nice and slow, repeat. I find they have also been a great exercise to strengthen knee joints as well.
Jump Squats
Taking the squats a bit further and utilizing more of your entire leg. Perform a squat as normal but as the variation, on the way up from you squat push and jump forward a foot or two. You may need to plan out your space before doing this, depending on how far you plan on jumping forward. Remember to focus on the squatting aspect of this exercise and less on how far you’re jumping.
Crab Walks
This is exercise is similar to the sumo walks, and essentially performed the same aside from the direction you’re moving. Instead of walking forward, move slowly side to side. This exercise works a bit differently as you are able to stay lower while keeping your glutes engaged, which is what you want.
Conclusion
Many of the calisthenic lower body exercises are good options to keep in your arsenal. A big reason why is that I find them to be simple to do just about anywhere I am. Also having the numerous options available, you can be sure that your exercises would never get boring and you will have enough workouts available to touch upon every part of your lower body.
