5 Best Leg Workouts for Women

W hile some men who go to the gym tend to overlook leg days because they mostly focus on developing their upper body strength, women are more conscious when it comes to lower body workouts. After all, you can’t have perfect glutes and flawless legs if you skip leg day, can you? And your weight loss efforts won’t be as successful if you don’t work out all muscle groups, so leg workouts are an integral part of the gym-goers routine.

Leg workouts don’t have to be overcomplicated. With a lot of exercises, you don’t even need equipment to execute them, just your body weight. Whether you plan on exercising at home or you want to learn some new moves to diversify your gym routine, the following 5 leg workouts (selections include exercises with and without apparatuses) are a must for developing lower body force, sculpting toned legs, and lifting the glutes. Exercises abound, but if you want to get closer to your fitness goals, these are your mandatory leg day workouts.

Always Start with a Warm-Up

To get your body going and make sure that your muscles are engaged before you start to avoid any potential injury, you have to warm up for at least 5 minutes. A light routine is enough, just a few drills to stimulate the muscles that you will later use during the actual workout. I recommend light cardio to get the blood flowing and raise the heart rate a bit.

Since we’re talking about leg day workouts specifically here, do some lateral band walks, jumping jacks, hip circle shuffles, and hip circle thrusters. About 5 to 10 minutes of these suffice to get you going.

Trainer Helps Woman Execute Leg Press Exercise Correctly

#1 – Leg Press

This is the name of the apparatus you use to carry out the exercise, and it also describes the movement you follow through with. Leg press machines are a regular presence in gyms because of the substantial lower body workout granted and the safe manner in which exercises are conducted with them. In fact, the vastus medialis and vastus lateralis witness the utmost stimulation during leg press exercises. But the leg press benefits don’t end here, far from it. The superior segment of the body is not involved in the exercise but rather kept safe on the resting surface. Instead, all the focus is put on the lower body, so there is no other gym equipment that comes close to it for developing strength in the leg muscles.

How to carry out the drill:
You’re not looking to break any world record but rather only work on your fitness and build strength in the lower body, so you don’t have to overdo it with the press load weight. It’s recommended to add only as much weight as you can drive without stressing the joints and knees to avert injury. The machine does a terrific job at working your leg muscles even if you only press the plate with no extra weight because of the mechanics of the exercise, so you can see why there’s no point in pushing yourself too much.

When it comes to accomplishing the exercise, it’s as easy as it can get. With your butt flat on the seat and your legs shaping a 90-degree angle at the knees while resting on the plate, push the press plate with the forefoot and heels until you almost completely extend them, and come back to the original position. Nevertheless, there are several ways to spot your feet on the plates, namely at shoulder-width separate, in a narrow position, in a wide position, high, or low. Contingent on what you pick, the involved muscles are activated differently.

Active muscles: quads, glutes, hamstrings, calves, abductors

#2 – Pulse Squat

Compared to the leg press, the squat is an exercise that you don’t necessarily need any equipment for. Nevertheless, if you want to build serious muscle mass, you ought to squat while holding an extra weight to put more pressure on muscles to grow. If you have the necessary equipment, you can execute Smith machine squats which are much safer than the classic free weight squats. The main idea is that there are several variants to execute squats, and no matter the variant you pick, it’s a great leg workout that you have to incorporate into your fitness routine.

How to carry out the drill:
The squat exercise we found to be most efficient is the pulse squat. I recommend holding a kettlebell during the exercise to strengthen your leg muscles optimally. When it comes to following through with the exercise motion, here’s how you should proceed:

• According to this study, you should employ a wide stance and natural foot positioning when you squat to maximize leg muscle activation and minimize the peril of injury.
• With your feet in the aforementioned wide stance and core muscles engaged, grab the kettlebell and flex the knees while holding the back straight. Go down until you form a 90-degree angle at the knees and do a pulse motion for 2-3 seconds before reverting to the initial position.
• Make sure that your back is straight throughout, the chest lifted, the core muscles stay engaged, and when you go back up that you engage the glutes as much as possible.

Active muscles: quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings, core muscles, lower back muscles

Young Woman Exercising on Leg Extension and Leg Curl Machine

#3 – Seated Hamstring Curl

The hamstrings and calves receive the most attention during this simple exercise. You need a leg curl machine to perform it, so it’s not a free weight exercise that you can execute just anywhere you like. Home gyms do generally include the possibility to perform hamstring curls though, so chances are that you can rely on this equipment for the exercise instead of a specialty apparatus dedicated solely to it.

How to carry out the drill:
Get on the seat and grab the side support bars if these are present, or hold onto the seat/back support instead. With your core muscles engaged, lift your feet to draw the pad up till your legs are flat in the air, or get as close to this position as possible. Halt at the top for a second and go back to the launch position gradually.

Active muscles: semitendinosus, biceps femoris, semimembranosus

#4 – Romanian Deadlift

You need a bar that you can tally weight plates onto. Go only as much as you can comfortably lift to avoid back or leg injuries. This is a variation of the classic deadlift that fortifies all the muscles running down the back of your body from the neck to the heels. You can keep your feet in different positions when it comes to the distance between them. This study indicates that different stance-width activates muscles differently during Romanian deadlift exercises, with wide and shoulder-width stances even allowing people to perform more repetitions. In turn, these two stances grant better results since more repetitions imply greater leg muscle development.

How to carry out the drill:
When it comes to performing the Romanian deadlift, regardless of the stance-width you opt for, this is how you must proceed to correctly perform the exercise and avoid injury in the process:

• Stand straight while holding onto the bar.
• With a slight flex in your knees, lower the weight gradually while keeping the back straight and curving at the hips.
• Go down until you experience a minor stretch in the hamstrings.
• With your hips forward, use the hamstrings to go back up.

Active muscles: hamstrings, abductors, erector spinae, gluteus maximus

Young Sporty Woman Doing Bridge Exercise

#5 – Hip Bridge

This is a simple exercise that you can accomplish without the use of any equipment except for a mat to comfortably sit on. If you want, you can hold onto a dumbbell, keeping it against the abdomen to amp the difficulty of the exercise. Another variant is to place a resistance band beyond the knees and space your feet out to create tension on the band. However, we recommend the classic simple exercise. It does its job efficiently and since there’s no other equipment involved, you can perform it anywhere and anytime you want, even at the office.

How to carry out the drill:

• Lay with your back on the mat and keep the knees crooked with your feet leveled on the floor and arms by the sides.
• Engage the glutes and core muscles to raise the hips until there is a flat surface from your chest to your knees.
• While at the top, compress the glutes for a moment.
• Drop your back gradually to the original position.

Active muscles: semitendinosus, gluteus medius, gluteus maximus, biceps femoris, gracilis

Don’t Forget to Cool Down

Before you officially end your leg day training routine, don’t forget to do some exercises to cool down. These help lower your body temperature and elevate your heartbeats. If you were to skip the cooldown and directly exit the gym or jump into the shower at home after the workout, you could risk passing out or feeling sick.

The best cool-down involves stretching exercises, and this is valid regardless of the workout routine you executed beforehand. If you have a full-body stretch machine, use it for 5-10 minutes. Otherwise, do some light exercises like core abdominal stretches, bent knee cross-body stretches, lunging calf stretches, and standing quad stretches.

Leg Day Sets and Repetitions

If you are just beginning your fitness journey, choose 3 of the exercises recommended here for each leg day training session. It’s best to focus on executing the workouts correctly rather than cramping in as many different exercises as possible. Perform at your peak and appropriately, that’s what matters most. With time, when your fitness improves, you can do all 5 exercises in one session, and even add to the list other leg workouts to amp lower body strength.

When it comes to sets and reps, keep it simple in the beginning. If your fitness level is low, three sets of 8 to 12 repetitions for each exercise is more than enough. If you have a training background and your body allows it, do 3 sets consisting of 15 to 20 repetitions for each calisthenic. Basically, go as high as your body allows it. You have to feel the burn when you work out, but it shouldn’t be unbearable. Pushing yourself too much or overexertion during the routine will lead to greater healing time, which is to your detriment.

The Takeaway

As you can see, you have options to perform leg workouts either with or without equipment. What I recommend from experience is that you try and integrate all 5 exercises into your leg day workout routine since they all play a pivotal role in leg muscle development. Whether you intend to strengthen the muscles and avoid injury or you want to shape perfect-looking legs and glutes, what matters is that you stay consistent and make sure that at least 2 training days per week are dedicated to leg day.