Here’s my killer home workout for legs using no equipment except a bench, but a chair or steps will work just as well. One of my personal training clients in central London has a very small apartment and asked me what exercise homework he could do indoors. This one’s for you!
Every personal trainer in London will have heard the excuse “I have no space to workout at home” or “I’ve no time to train”. This workout takes just 30 minutes (including warm-up at start and stretch at end) and you need about the same amount of space as the smallest prison-cell (or the average sized room in a flat in central London).
Rules:
1. no more than 30 seconds rest between sets
2. keep all movements slow and controlled
3. warm up at the start, with a general limbering-up of all your limbs, including leg-swings.
4. cool down at the end, then stretch legs for 10 minutes
The workout:
50 star-jumps
50 side-to-side jumps
20 squats
20 lunges
20 wide-squats (remember: wide knees too)
20 lunges
20 close-squats
20 step-ups (10 leading with left leg, then 10 leading with right leg)
20 fixed-foot step-ups (ditto, with fixed foot on bench, imagine your foot glued to bench)
wall-sit (1 minute, expect this to be tough)
20 reverse lunges
Repeat the two sets of step-ups (see above)
close-feet wall-sit (1 minute)
20 reverse lunges
wide-feet wall-sit (1 minute)
Cool-down: limbering down, swinging legs back and forth
Stretch: hold each stretch for 1 minute each leg for the following muscles:
Hamstrings
Glutes
Quads
Calves
Inner thighs
Dominic Londesborough is a personal trainer in London and author of this blog