Benefits Of Using Kettlebells To Work Out Your Legs

(See 00:44 in the video above)

“Kettlebells are easier to manage than barbells and plates,” says Shane Heins, Onnit’s Director of Fitness Education. If you don’t have access to a gym, or you need to train in hotel rooms due to frequent travel, the kettlebell is the more practical option than conventional free weights. Furthermore, you don’t need a wide array of poundages to get a good workout for any body part. One 16-kilo kettlebell can make for a pretty grueling routine.

The shape and design of the kettlebell allows you to move it in ways that can’t be done with other implements. This means you can train your legs while holding the weight aloft, in front of you, while rotating, and otherwise moving in multiple planes in order to get a unique training effect that prepares you for the movements you’ll make in everyday life and sports. The offset load, however, is what made kettlebells famous. “The bell’s center of gravity is set at a distance from its handle,” says Heins, meaning that you’ll have to work much harder to control the weight than you would with a dumbbell. That raises the stakes on every exercise you do, increasing the benefit to your stability and overall body control.

Why And How To Do The Single-Leg Kettlebell Deadlift

(See 01:27 in the video)

“Just because we have a greater sense of evenness when standing on two legs doesn’t mean both sides are doing their part evenly,” says Heins. Everyone has strength imbalances between sides, and while you’ll probably never smooth them out completely, it’s worth it to at least try to minimize the discrepancy. The single-leg deadlift strengthens the glutes, hamstrings, and adductors in each leg in turn, while improving your balance and body control on one leg. Single-leg training also lets you work through a greater range of motion, and that helps with mobility. All of these things are important for preventing injury, as lopsided strength and mobility between limbs can set you up for accidents. You’ll also find that when each leg works better on its own, the two will come together to produce more force on your bilateral exercises, such as conventional deadlifts and back squats.

Here’s how to perform the single-leg kettlebell deadlift with good form.

Step 1. Hold a kettlebell with both hands at arm‘s length in front of you. Retract and depress your shoulders—think: “proud chest.” Now stand with feet hip-width apart and pick your left foot up off the floor an inch or two (just high enough so it doesn’t scrape the floor when you begin your reps).

Step 2. Soften your right knee so there’s a slight bend, and begin pushing your hips straight back as if to touch a wall behind you. This motion is called a hip hinge, and it’s the same type of movement you’d perform in any deadlift variation.

Step 3. Push your left leg back and straighten it as you hinge at the hips, and try to keep the leg moving in a straight line, as if you were aiming to touch a target that was directly behind you. If you have trouble balancing, you can gently tap your left foot to the floor as you go, but try to keep it elevated. The left leg will serve as a sort of kickstand that supports you while you train the right leg.

Keep a long spine from your head to your tailbone as you bend your hips—don’t let your back round forward. Stop when you feel a good stretch in your right glutes and hamstrings.

Step 4. Extend your hips to come back up to standing tall, touch your foot down to reset, and repeat for reps. Afterward, switch legs and do your reps on the left leg.

Heins says to grip the floor with your foot as much as possible. (If possible, do the exercise in socks or bare feet so you can make better use of your toes). “Your weight should shift to your heel as you hinge,” says Heins. “Push your foot into the floor, and that will create stability up the chain.” Also, avoid twisting your hips and shoulders to either side. Strive to keep both square to the floor at all times.

Single-Leg Kettlebell Deadlift Alternatives

(See 06:20 in the video)

If you’re fairly new to lifting or don’t have a lot of single-leg work under your belt, your biggest challenge may be keeping your balance. In this case, try what Heins calls the sliding single-leg deadlift, where you’ll rely more on the kickstand leg to provide stability.

Sliding Single-Leg Deadlift

(See 06:40 in the video)

Step 1. Set up as you did for the single-leg deadlift but keep the toes of your left foot on the floor and raise your heel.

Step 2. Now bend your hips back and slide your left foot gently along the floor. Maintain contact with the floor throughout the set so you keep balance.

If even the sliding single-leg deadlift feels like a high-wire act, regress the movement one step further to the staggered-stance deadlift (also called a B-stance deadlift). All you have to do is split your legs and hinge the hips. The staggered stance takes a lot of balance out of the equation but still allows you to emphasize one leg over the other, so you get the benefits of unilateral training.

Staggered-Stance Deadlift

(See 07:05 in the video)

Step 1. Stand with your left foot a bit behind the right one so your left toes are in line with your right heel.

Step 2. Perform your hip hinge as normal, using the left leg only to maintain balance.

Yet another option is to hold the kettlebell at your chest rather than at arm’s length. By keeping the weight closer to your body, you’ll have better control of it and can focus almost exclusively on the deadlift motion itself. “The chest-held single-leg deadlift is a good way to instigate sitting back deeper into your hinge,” says Heins.

Chest-Held Single-Leg Deadlift

(See 08:02 in the video)

Step 1. You know the drill… Do any of the single-leg deadlift movements described above but with the bottom of the kettlebell held tight to your sternum and your chest proud.

Sample Kettlebell Leg Workout

(See 09:30 in the video)

Here’s a workout that incorporates the single-leg deadlift with other movements that build strong, balanced, and muscular legs.

DIRECTIONS

Perform the exercises as a circuit, completing one set of each in sequence without rest in between. Afterward, rest 2 minutes, and repeat the circuit for 3–5 total rounds.

1. Single-Leg Deadlift (Any Variation of the Above)

Reps: 10 (each side)

2. Kneeling Leg Extension

(See 10:23 in the video)

Reps: 5–10

Step 1. Get on your knees and hold a light kettlebell at chest level. Flatten the top of your feet into the floor. (You may want to put a towel or mat under you to protect your knees.)

Step 2. Keeping your hips locked out, SLOWLY bend your knees, allowing yourself to fall backward under control until you feel a big stretch in your quads. Stop before you lose control of the movement, and extend your knees to come back up.

Not only is this a challenging exercise, but it can be hard on your knees and quads if you’re not warmed up, so ease into this slowly after you’ve done a thorough warmup (see the video below!).

3. Single-Rack High-Knee March

(See 10:52 in the video)

Reps: 10 (each side)

Step 1. Hold the kettlebell in your right hand at shoulder level and stand with feet hip-distance apart.

Step 2. Drive your right foot into the floor while you raise your left knee up as high as you can. Lower it, and repeat on the other leg. After 10 reps, switch the kettlebell to your left hand.

4. Modified Sumo Squat To Figure-Four

(See 11:24 in the video)

Reps: 3 (each side)

Step 1. Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and turn your toes out as far as you can. Hold the kettlebell with both hands in front of your chest.

Step 2. Squat as deeply as you can, pushing your knees out as you descend. Keep your chest facing forward and maintain a long spine from your head to your tailbone—don’t let your pelvis tuck under (stop short of where it does).

Step 3. Extend your hips and knees to stand up tall again and then turn your body to your left, raise your right leg in front of you, and rest it against your left leg in a figure-four position. Depending on your mobility, you can rest the leg above the knee or against your shin—either is fine.

Release the right leg, return to the modified sumo stance, squat, and repeat the figure-four on the other side.

How To Stretch Your Legs Before Working Out

Perform the following mobility routine from Onnit-certified coach Eric Leija (@primal.swoledier) before you take on the workout above. It will stretch out your hips, glutes, and hamstrings for the work to come, and raise your core temperature for safer training.

How Often Should You Train Your legs?

(See 12:28 in the Single-Leg Kettlebell Deadlift video)

You can perform the workout outlined above three days per week on non-consecutive days. Heins says you could do it Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and perform your upper-body work on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.

Discover more single-leg training options, such as the B-stance hip thrust.

The post A Pro’s Kettlebell Leg Workout With The Single-Leg Deadlift appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Let’s explore how to do the landmine squat for better squat technique, more quad development, and safer, user-friendly squatting in general.

What Is The Landmine Squat And What Are Its Benefits?

(See 00:35 in the video above.)

The landmine squat is done with the barbell in a landmine unit, which is a metal cylinder that swivels on an axis. A landmine allows you to lift the barbell in various arcing motions rather than straight up and down, letting you perform a number of exercises with a less complex squatting technique that can be easier on your joints.

In the landmine squat, the weight is held in front of your body rather than behind it, so landmine squatting resembles the front squat as well as the goblet squat that many people do with a kettlebell. Therefore, it’s sometimes called a landmine goblet squat. One big advantage of the landmine squat over the kettlebell goblet squat is that it’s more stable, and the barbell allows you to load more weight, so landmine squats in general can be done heavier and are usually a better choice for building muscle than the goblet squat.

Like the goblet squat, the landmine squat reinforces good squatting mechanics that keep you safe—for example, sitting your hips back and keeping your chest up as you descend. If you have trouble squatting with a barbell on your back—that is, if it bothers your low back or knees, or you just can’t seem to keep form—the landmine squat can be an awesome replacement exercise. Use it to ingrain good squatting mechanics, and then go back to the barbell back squat or front squat. You’ll probably find that your technique is sharper, and you can squat deeper than before.

How To Do The Landmine Squat?

(See 01:35 in the video.)

The landmine squat is pretty easy to perform, making it a great move for beginners, or other people who don’t have much experience squatting with load. You want the bar right up against your chest, and keep your torso as upright as possible as you squat down.

Step 1. Load a barbell into a landmine. If you don’t have a landmine unit, you can wedge the end of the bar into a corner in your gym. It won’t be quite as stable, but it should still work. Set a box or bench on the floor in front of the bar, right next to where the barbell plates will be loaded. Pick up the end of the bar and rest it on the box and load the plates you’ll use. Now you have a platform to lift the bar off, making it easier to get into position for the start of the exercise.

Step 2. Squat down in front of the bar and wrap your hands around the end of it. Tuck your elbows to your sides. Keeping your back straight and flat, lift the bar off the box and step away from the box if needed so it’s not in the way of your squat. You should end up standing with the bar right at your chest. (Don’t hold the bar any higher; that will make your shoulders work harder than they have to, and you’ll fatigue your upper body before your legs.)

Adjust your stance so your feet are between hip and shoulder width and your toes are turned out a few degrees. Now you’ll have to play around with your position and see what’s comfortable. You can lean forward so your weight is more on the balls of your feet, or you can stand tall—whatever allows you to squat with the deepest range of motion and good form.

Step 3. Draw your ribs down, take a deep breath into your belly, and brace your core. Keeping a long spine from your head to your tailbone, squat as deeply as you can, driving your knees apart so that they line up with your big toes. You should be able to go much lower than you normally could in a back squat without your heels rising off the floor or your lower back rounding.

Step 4. Extend your hips and knees to stand tall again. When you’ve finished your set, rest the weight on the box again.

What Muscles Does The Landmine Squat Work?

(See 03:05 in the video.)

Like the back squat, you can count on the landmine squat to work the following muscles:

• Quadriceps (front thighs)
• Glutes (butt)
• Rectus abdominis, obliques (core)
• Various muscles of the upper back (they act as stabilizers here)
• Deltoids (shoulders, again, working to stabilize)
• Spinal erectors (lower back)

The landmine squat is a perfect choice for people who want to emphasize quad gains. Because the range of motion is so great at the knee joint (greater than a hip-dominant back squat), your quads will work hard throughout each rep. It’s also ideal if you suffer from lower-back pain during back squats. Your torso stays very vertical on a landmine squat, minimizing shear forces on the lumbar. In other words, landmine squatting lets you train legs heavy and hard without undue stress on the spine.

How To Do The Landmine Hack Squat

(See 03:34 in the video.)

The landmine can also be used as a substitute for the hack squat—the squat machine you see in most gyms where the weight is held behind the body and your back rests on a pad. The landmine hack squat may allow you to squat even deeper than the regular landmine squat, making it a great tool for emphasizing the quads. That said, it’s a little more awkward to set up and, for most people, will take some getting used to.

Step 1. Set up the barbell in a landmine as you did for the regular landmine squat. You don’t have to use a box to rest the bar on if you’re using light weights that you’re sure you can control, but if you do, make sure that when you squat, the bar will be clear of the platform. Wrap your hands around the bar and lift it up, turn around, and rest the bar on one shoulder.

Step 2. Play around with your foot position until you feel balanced and stable. Your feet should be between hip and shoulder-width apart and a little in front of you, and you should lean your bodyweight backward into the plate on the bar—that’s right, let the barbell support your weight just like a hack squat machine would. In this case, the bar really should be in a landmine unit. A corner alone may not provide the stability to support your body—so be smart and stay safe!

Step 3. Lower your body into the squat, going as deeply as you can without your pelvis tucking under and your lower back rounding. You should be able to get your knees almost fully flexed.

Step 4. Drive through the balls of your feet to stand back up. On your next set, switch the shoulder that the bar rests on so you don’t develop an imbalance.

How to Stretch Before Exercising

Use the following drills from Onnit-certified coach Eric Leija (@primal.swoledier) to warm up your hips and knees for strong squatting.

Landmine Squat Alternatives

(See 05:15 in the Landmine Squat video at the top.)

If you don’t have a landmine or a barbell, you can perform a goblet squat with either a kettlebell or a dumbbell. Like the landmine squat, the goblet squat is an excellent movement for learning and refining good squat technique, as it automatically forces you to squat with your chest up while driving your knees apart and sitting back into your hips.

Step 1. Hold a kettlebell in front of your chest by the sides of its handle. Draw your shoulders back and downward (think: “proud chest”), and tuck your elbows in close to the bell—try to get your forearms as vertical as you can. Stand with your feet between hip- and shoulder-width apart, and turn your toes out a bit—up to 30 degrees if you need to.

Step 2. Tuck your tailbone and draw your ribs down so that your pelvis is parallel to the floor. Take a deep breath into your belly, and brace your core. Actively twist your feet into the floor, but don’t let them move. Think of your legs as screwdrivers, or that you’re standing on grass and trying to twist it up beneath you. You should feel the arches in your feet rise and your glutes tighten, creating tension in the lower body.

Step 3. Keeping a long spine from your head to your pelvis, push your hips back and squat down, as if sitting down into a chair. Squat as low as you can while keeping your head, spine, and pelvis aligned. Push your knees apart as you descend. You should feel most of your weight on your heels to mid-foot area. If you feel your lower back beginning to round, stop there, and come back up. Keep your torso as vertical as possible—you shouldn’t have to lean forward or work extra hard to hold the bell upright. Avoid bending or twisting to either side.

Step 4. Drive through your feet as you extend your hips and knees to come up.

Learn more about squatting variations for different goals with our guide to Front Squats Vs. Back Squats: Everything You Need To Know For Building Muscle.

The post How To Do The Landmine Squat: Hack Squats, Goblet Squats, and More appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Well, not quite. Your average gymnast or wrestler does the majority of their training with bodyweight; ditto for the guys in your local park who do pullups and pushups by the hundreds. And have you ever seen a speed-cyclist’s legs? These athletes may not load up on squats, deadlifts, and leg presses, but no one’s questioning their strength and muscle mass. The fact is, done correctly, bodyweight training can be quite challenging, even humbling, and give you more than enough stimulus to grow muscle and gain power.

The following is a guide to getting bigger, stronger legs by lifting your bodyweight—and nothing else.

Can You Build Leg Muscles and Strength Without Weights?

The science is pretty clear now that the main driver of muscle growth is mechanical tension—the tension your muscle fibers experience when you take a set of an exercise to failure, or close to failure, and your rep speed slows down involuntarily. In other words, it doesn’t matter whether you’re lifting weights or using your own bodyweight for resistance, or whether you’re doing high reps or low reps. As long as you train hard enough that your muscles start to fatigue and your reps slow down near the end of your set, they’re going to experience enough tension to deliver a stimulus that allows you to gain muscle and strength.

Notice that the operative term is “tension,” not load. Lifting weights is a pretty easy way to measure, control, and progress the amount of tension you apply—for example, you know how much you’re lifting when you grab 40-pound dumbbells, and you know that when you can use the 45s, you’ve gotten stronger. But the weight of your body can create mechanical tension too. You just have to be a little more creative in how you use it. The exercises we recommend here will hit your legs in a number of ways you’re probably not at all used to, making your body feel as heavy as a loaded barbell.

When you do bodyweight exercises, you often have the opportunity to use a greater range of motion than when you lift weights, because there is no barbell or dumbbells to accommodate. This is beneficial if you’re limited in your mobility, as performing lengthened-range exercises will improve your ability to get into those deeper positions. Improved mobility, in turn, promotes joint health and athleticism.

The Most Effective Bodyweight Leg Exercises

You don’t need any weights to do the exercises that follow. Some basic equipment such as a bench, exercise mat, furniture sliders, and an elastic resistance band will help you perform them in some cases, so it’s good to have access to a home gym or garage that provides some options, but you don’t need barbells, dumbbells, or machines. 

Slider Leg Curl

Target: hamstrings

(See 01:35 in the video above.)

The slider leg curl works the hamstrings’ two functions at the same time. That is, extending the hips and flexing the knees, similar to a glute-ham raise (an excellent bodyweight hamstring exercise we’ve already written about, but one that requires a special bench that isn’t available in most gyms). All you need is a pair of furniture sliders, or, if you’re training on a smooth, waxed floor, some towels or even paper plates can work too.

Step 1. Lie on your back on the floor, and place the sliders under your heels. Position your feet right behind your butt with your knees bent. Tuck your pelvis under, take a deep breath into your belly, and brace your core. Drive your heels into the floor to raise your hips to full extension.

Step 2. From there, slowly extend your legs until you feel you’re about to lose tension in your hamstrings, and then slide your heels back toward you as if doing a normal leg curl. Keep your hips extended the whole time, but be careful not to hyperextend your lower back.

Aim for 2 sets of 6–12 reps. If that feels easy, you can hook some elastic exercise bands around your heels for extra resistance.

Bodyweight Leg Extension (aka Reverse Nordic)

Target: quadriceps

(See 02:27 in the video.)

Almost all quad exercises involve hip flexion too. That means you fold at the hip when you do them, as in a squat, lunge, and even a leg extension. The bodyweight leg extension is unique in that the hips remain extended the whole time. This forces the quads into a deep stretch when you bend your knees, making them work from a lengthened position. This is an unusual range to train the quads, and makes for a nice complement to more conventional quad exercises.

Step 1. Attach an elastic exercise band to a sturdy object at about the height your head would be if you were kneeling on the floor. (The band isn’t a must have, but it will help you get more range of motion on the exercise.) Place a mat or towel on the floor and kneel on it with your shoelaces down and knees about shoulder-width apart. Grasp the free end of the band, and hold it with your arms extended in front of you. Scoot back until there’s light tension on the band.

Step 2. Extend your hips so you’re standing tall, and tuck your pelvis under slightly so it’s perpendicular to your spine. Squeeze your glutes and brace your core.

Step 3. Slowly allow your body to drift backward (your butt moves toward your heels), keeping your hips extended and driving your feet into the ground so that your quads control the descent. You’ll feel a strong stretch in your thighs.

Step 4. When you feel you can no longer control the movement backward, use your quads to extend your knees and come back to the starting position. Use the band to help you pull yourself back.

Try for 2 sets of 5–10 reps, but you may only be able to manage a few reps with these at first. Do them with control and progress gradually. As you get stronger, you can eventually ditch the band and use your bodyweight alone, unassisted.

Copenhagen Plank

Target: Adductors

(See 04:09 in the video.)

The main way people train the adductor muscles directly is with the seated adductor machine, but the Copenhagen plank allows the body to remain in a straight line, stacking the shoulders and hips over the knees just as they appear when you’re standing and moving. Since it’s also a variation of the side plank, you’ll get some core work from it too.

Step 1. Lie on one side, and place your top leg on a box or bench. The knee of the top leg should be bent enough so that your entire shin can apply pressure to the surface of the box. The bottom leg can be straight or slightly bent. Plant your bottom elbow and forearm on the floor, and brace your core.

Step 2. Drive your top shin down into the box to raise your body off the floor, and try to close the space between your two legs, sandwiching the platform you’re working on. Your body should form a nearly straight line in the top position.

Aim for 2 sets of 10–12 reps each leg, moving with a slow, controlled tempo. If performing reps is too difficult, simply get into the top position and hold it for a 15 to 30-second isometric. That’s one set.

Touchdown Squat

Target: glutes and quads

(See 05:33 in the video.)

A true one-legged, full-depth, single-leg squat (known as a pistol squat) is very challenging and is not doable for most people without a lot of practice.  Here’s a way you can work up to a pistol, doing a similar movement that challenges balance, stability, and ankle mobility while also working the quads and glutes hard.

Step 1. Set a box or some mats on the floor so that, when you stand on them, you’ll be a few inches above the floor. You can build this height up over time. Stand on the surface with one leg and raise your other leg out to the side a bit so it’s out of the way.

Step 2. Hinge your hips back so your torso bends forward and lower your body until the heel on your free leg gently taps the floor. Try to keep your working knee in line with your hip. Extend your hips and knee to come back up to standing.

Go for 2 sets of 5–10 reps.

Lateral Leg Raise

Target: abductors

(See 06:23 in the video.)

This exercise is more of a mobility move than heavy duty strength training, but it will burn like fire and strengthen the outer hip muscles and glutes. Lateral leg raises work your lower body in the frontal plane—i.e., moving side to side—which is a neglected movement pattern and very important for athletes. You can use it as part of your warmup on a leg day, or do it as a finisher.

Step 1. Hold on to a sturdy object for balance and stand with your feet hip-width apart.

Step 2. Raise one leg out to your side as high as you can without bending the knee or twisting your hips. Hold the top for a second, and then control the descent.

Perform 2–3 sets of 8–12 reps.

As you get more comfortable with the movement, progress to performing straight-legged hip circles, raising your leg in front of you, then out to the side, and finally behind you.

How to Stretch and Prepare For a Bodyweight Leg Workout

Stretching and mobility work are paramount for getting the most out of your athletic potential and avoiding injury. Done before your lower-body workout, the following three drills can warm and limber up your hips, hamstrings, knees, and quads.

Squat and Reach

(See 00:28 in the video above.)

Step 1. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, and turn your toes out about 20 degrees. Keep your head, spine, and pelvis in a long straight line as you squat down and wedge your elbows between your knees, using your arms to gently pry your knees apart even more. As you push the knees out, try to extend your torso to get as tall and upright as possible.

Step 2. Plant your hands down on the floor inside your knees, and twist your torso to the right, reaching one hand straight overhead. Turn your head as well so you’re watching your hand. It’s OK if your heel comes off the floor as you twist, but try to keep it down. Return your hand to the floor, and repeat on the opposite side.

Step 3. Stand back up from the bottom of your squat position, keeping your heels on the floor. That’s one rep. Perform 2 sets of 3–5 reps. 

High-Knee Walk

(See 01:31 in the video.)

Step 1. Stand tall, and take a step forward, raising one knee to your chest as high as you can. As the knee rises, grab hold of your shin with both hands and pull it into your chest for a deep glute and inner-thigh stretch. Avoid slouching or bending forward as you do. Try to keep the support leg straight as well.

Step 2. Release the leg, plant your foot, and repeat on the opposite leg.

It’s OK to come up onto the ball of your foot with each step. Do 2 sets of 8–10 strides. 

Spiderman Walk

(See 02:43 in the video.)

Step 1. Stand tall, and take a big lunge step forward. Place your hands on the floor to the inside of your lead leg, and lower your trailing knee to the floor. 

Step 2. Tuck your pelvis under slightly, and push your hips forward until you feel a deep stretch—it’s OK to let your knee move in front of your toes.

Step 3. Twist your torso away from your lead leg and raise your arm overhead. Turn your head and follow it with your eyes. Be sure to raise the arm above you, not behind, so you create a straight vertical line between your planted arm and your raised arm.

Step 4. Return your hand to the floor, and then step forward with the rear leg to stand tall again. Repeat the lunge and twist on that leg.

Perform 2 sets of 5–6 strides on each side.

Sample Bodyweight Leg Workout Plan

Here’s a balanced leg routine that makes the most of the exercises listed above.

DIRECTIONS

Perform the exercises in sequence, completing all sets for one move before going on to the next. Remember to take each set close to failure. You should only stop at the point where you don’t think you could do another rep with good form.

(See 07:07 in the Best Bodyweight Leg Exercises video at the top.)

1. Sliding Leg Curl

Sets: 2  Reps: 6–12

2. Touchdown Squat

Sets: 2  Reps: 5–10

3. Copenhagen Plank

Sets: 2  Reps: 6–12 (or hold for 15–30 sec.)

4. Bodyweight Leg Extension

Sets: 2  Reps: 5–10

5. Lateral Leg Raise

Sets: 2  Reps: 8–12

Try another great bodyweight routine with our Ultimate Calisthenics Workout.

The post The Best Bodyweight Leg Exercises & Workouts for Strength appeared first on Onnit Academy.

“What are you guys training today?” he asked.

“Well, we were going to hit legs, but we can’t get a squat rack and we don’t have machines. Oh well, see you next week!”

“Not so fast,” said Leija. “I can take you through a leg workout using only some kettlebells and your bodyweight. It’ll turn those twigs into tree trunks in no time.”

What could we say? Leija’s quads were blocking the door. And if you’ve seen them, you know why we refer to him as Onnit’s resident redwood.

Defeated but inspired, we downed some Alpha BRAIN^® Pre-Workout, gritted our teeth, and followed Leija into the weight room.

See the routine he showed us below to build your quads, hams, and glutes.

Can I Get Big Legs With Kettlebells?

Heavy barbell squatting, leg press machines, and leg extensions may get all the publicity for producing thick, muscular legs, but they’re certainly not the only tools that can do it. If you train with modest equipment at home, a gym that only offers the basics, or a facility that is so crowded after 5 p.m. that you can’t get your hands on anything but a few kettlebells, kettlebell and bodyweight training is your answer.

Leija’s workout starts with the kettlebell swing, but not for sets to infinity as you often see done. The swing is a great exercise for endurance, but it can also build power and strength in the glutes and hamstrings when performed for low reps. After five heavy sets here, your hips and knees will be plenty juicy for the rear-foot elevated split squats that follow.

Ask a cross-section of trainers which leg exercise they dread most and we bet these split squats come up near the top of the list more often than not, and for good reason. One leg has to support your whole body—your rear foot is really just there to help you keep balance—and you’ll work through a greater range of motion than you do with back squats. Like the swings, most people do split squats light (if they do them at all), but don’t be afraid to go heavy here. Sets with as much weight as you can handle for five reps will light up your quads, glutes, and adductors—the inner-thigh muscles most people neglect.

From there, you’ll train straight power with the squat jump. Focus on jumping as high as you can and controlling the landing. These burn like normal squats, so you know they’re activating plenty of muscle, but the goal here is explosiveness. Being able to recruit muscle fibers quickly and produce fast contractions translates to stronger lifts with heavier weight, not to mention greater running, jumping, and sports performance in general.

Next up are goblet squats, which teach the squat pattern like nothing else. Holding the kettlebell in front of your chest acts as a counterbalance, allowing you to stay vertical as you descend without fear of losing balance. You’ll most likely be able to sink into a deep squat, getting more out of your quads and glutes, while reinforcing good mechanics. The next time you back squat or front squat with a barbell, you’ll have better control of the movement.

Finally, Leija chops your legs down with some walking lunges. You’ll burn out whatever is left in the muscles by performing 100 total reps—and doing whatever it takes to get them. Aim for five sets of 20 reps, 10 sets of 10, sets of 50, 30, and 20, or whatever other configuration you’re capable of, resting as needed in between, but get 100 total.

Only then have you earned the right to a smoothie and sauna.

For a six-week program of kettlebell-only workouts you can do at home, see our Onnit 6 Kettlebell course.

Kettlebell Tree Trunk Workout Directions

Perform the exercises in the order shown. Do not perform any other leg routine for at least three full days before and after this workout. For the best results, repeat the workout for four to six weeks, adding weight and reps to the exercises wherever possible.

1. Jump Rope

Reps: Jump for 3 minutes

(See 00:08 in the video above.)

This is your warm up. Jump 3 minutes at an easy pace. You can mix up the type of jump you do (for instance, jump with one leg at a time, alternate legs, or swing the rope backward), or just do two-legged jumps as shown.

2. Kettlebell Swing

Sets: 5  Reps: 10

(See 00:20 in the video.)

See our full tutorial on how to perform the kettlebell swing here.

Take a few warmup sets to work up to the heaviest kettlebell you can handle for 10 reps, safely. Make sure to keep your lower back flat and extend your hips to drive the kettlebell up (don’t lift with your shoulders).

3. Rear-Foot Elevated Split Squat

Sets: 4  Reps: 5 (each leg)

(See 00:45 in the video.)

Step 1: Hold a kettlebell in each hand and stand lunge length in front of a bench, step, or box that’s about 12 inches high.

Step 2: Step your left foot back and rest the top of your left foot on the bench so that your knee is bent 90 degrees. Your right foot should point straight forward.

Step 3: Hinge your hips back a bit so you feel like you’re leaning forward, but keep your spine straight and tall. Slowly bend your right leg until your left knee is just above the floor. Your front leg should be bent about 90 degrees.

You may want to spend some time in the bottom position before you start your set to figure out your best distance from the bench. You should feel like your front foot is forward enough that your heel won’t come off the floor, but not so far that you feel your hamstrings getting stretched in the bottom position.

When you’ve found a good stance, come up to a standing position. Then begin your set. Rest as needed between legs.

4. Squat Jump w/ Reset

Sets: 4  Reps: 3

(See 01:07 in the video.)

Step 1. Stand with feet between hip and shoulder width. Reach your arms straight overhead and get up on the balls of your feet.

Step 2. Drop your heels to the floor as you swing your arms back behind you to gather power.

Step 3. Swing your arms forward and overhead as you jump as high as possible. Land with soft knees and take a moment to reset yourself. Then begin the next rep.

5. Goblet Squat

Sets: 3  Reps: 10–15

(See 01:20 in the video.)

Step 1. Hold a kettlebell in front of your chest by the sides of its handle, or by the bottom of the bell itself. Draw your shoulders back and downward (think: “proud chest”), and tuck your elbows in close to the bell—try to get your forearms as vertical as you can. Stand with your feet between hip and shoulder width, and turn your toes out a bit—up to 30 degrees if you need to.

Step 2. Tuck your tailbone and draw your ribs down so that your pelvis is parallel to the floor. Take a deep breath into your belly, and brace your core. Actively twist your feet into the floor, but don’t let them move. Think of your legs as screwdrivers, or that you’re standing on grass and trying to twist it up beneath you. You should feel the arches in your feet rise and your glutes tighten, creating tension in the lower body.

Step 3. Keeping a long spine from your head to your pelvis, push your hips back and squat down, as if sitting down into a chair. Squat as low as you can while keeping your head, spine, and pelvis aligned. Push your knees apart as you descend. You should feel most of your weight on your heels to mid-foot area. If you feel your lower back beginning to round, stop there, and come back up. Keep your torso as vertical as possible—you shouldn’t have to lean forward or work extra hard to hold the bell upright. Avoid bending or twisting to either side.

Step 4. Drive through your feet as you extend your hips and knees to come up.

6. Suitcase Walking Lunge

Reps: 100 total

(See 01:40 in the video.)

Step 1. Hold a kettlebell in each hand and take a long step forward. As your foot lands, bend your knee and lower your body until your front thigh is parallel to the floor.

Step 2. Step forward with your rear leg and lunge on that side. Each rep should have you walking forward, and each lunge counts as one rep. Do as many sets as needed to complete 100 total reps (50 each leg).

For another great lower-body routine, see our Pro’s Guide to Dumbbell Leg Exercises and Workouts.

The post Kettlebell Tree Trunk Leg Workout appeared first on Onnit Academy.

If you want to build a stable, strong, and explosive body, the same advice applies, although perhaps a little more literally. The HydroCore Bag harnesses the power of water for a variety of training effects that you can’t get from conventional gym tools.

What Is The HydroCore Bag?

The HydroCore Bag is a training implement invented by Maurizio Tangari, a trainer to MMA fighters, military personnel, and celebrities. It was inspired by a similar tool, the Bulgarian Bag®, which is an evolution of a traditional training method used by old-time Eastern European wrestlers—carrying small farm animals across the back of the shoulders to develop functional strength, stability, and endurance.

Thankfully, in the wake of advancing technology—and animal cruelty laws—there’s no need to tote squirming livestock anymore. The HydroCore bag is here. A plastic bladder in the shape of a yoke—the harness that attaches to oxen and other animals—the HydroCore bag is loaded with water (while the Bulgarian Bag used sand®). When you lift it to perform any number of exercises (some of which are shown below), the water sloshes around in the bag. This creates an effect known as water dynamics. Controlling the movement of the water in the bag, rather than it controlling you, trains various athletic qualities.

What Are The Benefits of HydroCore Bag Training?

The HydroCore Bag is a formidable addition to anyone’s training arsenal, especially if you’re an athlete or martial artist. Here’s a rundown of what the bag can do.

Builds Rock-Solid Stability

As the water moves around inside the bag, it’s going to threaten any position you put your body in. To maintain control of the bag, your body alignment, and your exercise form, you’ll have to be hyper-aware of all three, and brace all your movements hard. As a result, you’ll develop tremendous stability and balance. “The bag forces core engagement without having to think about it,” says Tangari. “If I’m training you, I don’t have to constantly remind you to keep your core tight.” If it isn’t, you’ll feel yourself losing control during the set, which leads us to point number two.

Improves Exercise Technique

Performing exercises properly is the only way to progress on them indefinitely and stay injury-free. The HydroCore Bag all but ensures you use good technique on any movement you perform, because if you don’t, you’ll recognize it pretty fast. Performing dynamic moves like the pendulum are virtually impossible to do if your form is off, so you’ll be able to identify your mistakes and correct them immediately. In the pendulum, for instance, in which you swing the bag laterally, you’ll learn to move with the momentum of the water. If your timing isn’t right, the bag will be much harder to control. When you’ve got it down, the movement will flow, and you’ll know your form is good.

Better technique on bag exercises will also translate to better technique in other lifts you do, as your body awareness and stability improve.

“For any bag training you do,” says Tangari, “start by trying to prevent the water from sloshing.” Keeping the bag “quiet” will force you to move more deliberately and intentionally, maximizing stability. As you get more accustomed to how bag training feels, you can purposely shake the bag as you perform your lifts to create more perturbation that activates even more stabilizer muscles.

Boosts Strength and Explosiveness

The HydroCore Bag can be used for a wide range of movements, but it lends itself best to dynamic, explosive exercises like clean, snatch, and swing variations. The advantage to performing these kinds of moves with the bag versus a barbell is the offset load provided by the water and the bag’s shape. Rather than accelerate and absorb the force of a perfectly balanced implement (like a barbell), you have to accommodate the constant shifting of the water in the bag. This makes training a little more real-world and applicable to sports like football, MMA, and wrestling, where you have to overcome the opposing forces of a live, resisting adversary.

The bag is also durable enough that you can throw it—perfect for wrestlers or other grapplers who need to suplex an opponent from time to time. Training to produce force quickly without having to decelerate it at the end of the range of motion (as you do with a barbell clean, snatch, jerk, etc.) allows you to maximize power development. In other words, when you throw the bag, you don’t have to slow it down like you do when training barbell lifts. Toss it as hard as you can and let it go. You wouldn’t slow down when expressing power on the field or the mat, so why limit your potential by training that way?

“The HydroCore bag will move faster around your body than any other implement,” says Tangari, including sandbags, kettlebells, or a steel mace. So the challenge it presents your muscles in starting and overcoming inertia is unique.

In addition to power, most athletes need greater grip strength and holding onto the bag while it’s moving and shaking provides a serious test. The Bulgarian Bag® was a pioneering tool for grip development, but we think the HydroCore is even better. Ball stoppers on the ends of the handles prevent slippage and increase safety, making the HydroCore easier to handle for people who are new to dynamic bag training. For variability in grip, there are also handles around the center of the bag on the front. You can hold the bag in several different positions and orientations to customize the intensity of your workout.

Light-Weight and Easy To Transport

The HydroCore bag makes for a highly portable, all-in-one gym, so it’s perfect for people who travel frequently and can’t find time or places to train on the road. When empty, it’s virtually weightless, and easily folds into a suitcase. To fill it, you need only a bathtub faucet, garden hose, swimming pool, or ocean/lake/stream. “Ten pounds of water is enough for most people to start,” says Tangari, which only fills the bag about one-quarter full. “More than that sacrifices the instability factor,” and makes it more like lifting a heavy sandbag. (However, if you choose to, and your strength allows it, the bag can be filled to provide 30 pounds of resistance.)

Because the bag provides such a good workout with minimal loading, a man and woman can use the same weight and both can get in a great session; beginners can work out alongside advanced trainees. Tangari often takes his clients to the beach, fills up the bag in the ocean, and trains a group right there on the sand.

It’s Fun!

Training with the HydroCore doesn’t feel like lifting weights or doing cardio. It feels like you’re playing with a toy. You can work your muscles and your heart without thinking about it too hard. Focus on controlling and/or moving with the water, and workouts will seem like a game.

Sample HydroCore Bag Workouts

The following workouts will give you a taste of what HydroCore Bag training is like. Start with one of the beginner routines if you’ve never worked out with the HydroCore Bag, a Bulgarian Bag®, or a sandbag before. If you’re more experienced with bag training, skip ahead to the advanced bag workout. Fill the bag ¼ full for the beginner routine, and ½ full for the advanced.

Beginner Bag Workout, Option A

Perform each exercise in sequence. For each move, perform reps for 20 seconds and then rest 10 seconds. That’s one round. Repeat for 3–5 rounds.

1. Lunge With Twist

Step 1. Hold the front of the bag in front of your chest with your hands up through the rubber handles. Try to keep the bag parallel to the floor throughout the exercise.

Step 2. Take a big step forward and lower your body into a lunge—your rear knee should end up just above the floor and the thigh of the lunging leg should be parallel to the floor.

Step 3. As soon as your foot touches down, smoothly twist your body in the direction of your front leg. Stabilize the bag, and keep your torso upright. Step back to the starting position. Repeat on the opposite leg.

2. Pushup On Bag

Step 1. Place the bag on the floor with the horn ends pointing toward you. Get into pushup position with your hands on the bag and brace your body.

Step 2. Keeping your head, spine, and pelvis in a straight line, lower your body until your chest touches the bag, and then press back up.

3. Bent-over Row

Step 1. Hold the bag by the sides with arms extended, and bend your hips back while keeping your head, spine, and pelvis in a straight line. Your torso should end up nearly parallel to the floor.

Step 2. Row the bag to your belly explosively, drawing your shoulder blades down and together as you pull. The row will cause the water to slosh around inside the bag—stabilize it, and keep your balance.

Beginner Bag Workout, Option B

Perform each exercise in sequence. For each move, perform reps for 20 seconds and then rest 10 seconds. That’s one round. Repeat for 3–5 rounds.

1. Bag Squat To Press

Step 1. Hold the bag in front of your chest and stand with feet between hip and shoulder-width apart.

Step 2. Sit back and squat down as deeply as you can while keeping your head, spine, and pelvis in a straight line. Squeeze your glutes as you come back up to standing.

Step 3. Press the bag overhead to lockout while keeping your ribs down and core engaged.

2. Suitcase Row

Step 1. Stand on a box or bench to create some distance between you and the floor. Hold the bag by one of the rubber handles and bend your hips back as described in the bent-over row above.

Step 2. Row the bag to your side explosively, controlling the sloshing of the water. Don’t let your torso twist or bend to either side. Perform reps for 10 seconds and then switch sides and repeat.

Advanced Bag Workout

Perform each exercise in sequence. For each move, perform reps for 45 seconds and then rest 10 seconds. That’s one round. Repeat for 3–5 rounds. If you get fatigued, slow your pace, but don’t end the set before time is up.

1. Halo

Step 1. Hold the bag by its sides and make circles over and around your head. Alternate directions. Keep your ribs drawn down and your core engaged, and avoid bending or twisting your torso.

2. Pendulum Swing

Step 1. Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and hold the bag by the rope handles. Pivot on your right foot as you swing the bag laterally to your left. Duck your torso under slightly as you twist so that the bag wraps around your upper back.

Step 2. Reverse the direction and swing the bag to the other side.

3. One-Arm Overhead Press

Step 1. Hold the bag in one hand at shoulder level with the horns pointing downward.

Step 2. Keeping your ribs down and core braced, press the bag overhead. Perform reps for 20 seconds on one side, and then switch sides and repeat.

For a six-week HydroCore training program, see Onnit 6 HydroCore.

The post HydroCore Bag Training For An Unshakeable Body appeared first on Onnit Academy.

– Dumbbells provide several advantages, including freedom of motion, the ability to correct strength imbalances, safety, and stability.

– Some of the best dumbbell exercises include the paused squat jump, Bulgarian split squat, step-over lunge, Romanian deadlift, single-leg kickstand wall RDL, lateral lunge with reach, front-foot elevated split squat, and goblet squat.

– Dumbbells can be used to add muscle size, strength, power, and mobility to the legs.

A Pro’s Guide To Dumbbell Leg Exercises and Workouts

There aren’t too many things from 700 B.C. that are still in style, but dumbbells are an exception. The use of dumbbells, specifically for leg training, dates back to at least ancient Greece. Records show that athletes swung stone implements while they practiced jumping drills, using the extra weight to add momentum to their leaps. Later, the term “dumbbell” was coined in the 1700s in England, and then migrated to the U.S. where, it appears, the Founding Fathers started clanging and banging. In letters to his son, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “I live temperately, drink no wine, and use daily the exercise of the dumbbell.” (He claimed to have performed a workout consisting of 40 swings.)

Hundreds of years later, dumbbells are still accessible, versatile, relatively easy to use, and highly effective for helping you build muscle, strength, and athleticism. If they were good enough for Spartan warriors and the guy on the $100 bill, they’re good enough for you and me.

I like dumbbells for all kinds of training—especially lower-body work—and if they’re all you’ve got due to your gym being closed or out of your budget, you’d better learn how to make the most of them. Here, I’ll share my favorite dumbbell leg exercises, and give you a workout that ties them all together to build muscular, strong legs that are also capable of explosive speed and agility.

What Are the Benefits of Working Out My Legs with Dumbbells?

Dumbbells offer many advantages over barbells, machines, and other implements for training the legs. Here are some key benefits.

Greater Freedom of Motion

When you use a barbell, the weight is fixed in one position. That can be a problem if you have injuries, or lack flexibility. Dumbbells allow you to adjust where the weight is in relation to your body, and that can let you customize your exercises to perform them more safely.

Take Romanian deadlifts, for example. Using a barbell, the weight moves down the front of your body to your shins as you bend your hips back. The load is displaced in front of you, and that puts a lot of stress on your lower back. With dumbbells, you have the freedom to hold the load further back, closer to your sides and your center of gravity. This keeps more of the stress on the hamstrings where you want it, and less on the low back.

Correction of Strength Imbalances

When you use barbells and machines, it’s difficult to recognize strength imbalances between sides. The strong limb will compensate for the weaker one, and you won’t notice which leg is lagging behind the other. Over time, failing to correct this imbalance can lead to injury.

Dumbbells lend themselves well to unilateral training—working one limb at a time. Lunges, split squats, and single-leg RDL’s are all more practical and user-friendly to do with dumbbells versus other equipment, and they make you aware of your restrictions, both in terms of range of motion and strength. Training one leg at a time, you’ll see which side needs more work, and you can begin to even things out. Unilateral training also allows you to work with greater ranges of motion (you can typically go further down on a single-leg RDL or squat than you can on the two-legged versions), and it’s more in line with how we move in real life—balancing, landing, and pushing off from one leg at a time rather than both together. Get strong unilaterally, and you’ll almost certainly be stronger when you use both legs at once.

Increased Stability

It’s hard to balance on one leg, so unilateral dumbbell training builds more stability than training bilaterally. This alone can go a long way toward helping you break through muscle and strength plateaus.

When your joints lack stability, your brain recognizes it, and won’t allow you to produce the maximum amount of force that you’re capable of. Essentially, it puts the breaks on to prevent you from hurting yourself. In that sense, dumbbell training plays a big role in unlocking your potential to grow from all the training you do.

Greater Safety

With any exercise tool you use, you have to be aware of your body and focus on proper form when you train. But dumbbells are inherently safer than barbells. A) They offer greater freedom of motion (explained above). B) They don’t allow you to train as heavy, and C) they’re easy to let go of if you get in trouble. Hang around a gym long enough and you’re bound to see somebody get stuck at the bottom of a barbell back squat and need to be helped up. But if you can’t complete a rep with dumbbells, you can bail out by simply dropping the weights to the floor. For anyone training at home alone, dumbbells are a must.

Joint-Friendy Training

Whether it’s back squats, deadlifts, or their many variations, barbell leg exercises tend to put a lot of compression and shear forces on your spine. If your form isn’t pristine, the risk of injury goes up dramatically, and many people have mobility and stability limitations that prevent them from doing these lifts safely.

Dumbbell leg exercises don’t load the spine directly. Furthermore, because they’re conducive to safer training, you’ll feel more confident pushing yourself further without fear of your form breaking down. This can mean more intense workouts and faster gains.

What Leg Exercises Can I Do With Dumbbells?

Now I’ll introduce you to eight of my favorite dumbbell leg exercises (Onnit only asked me for five, but I couldn’t help myself!). Together, they cover the gamut of training goals. Some are for straight-up leg mass, and others help to build explosiveness and athleticism. Many of them will really stretch your hamstrings, hips, and adductors, too, expanding your mobility so you can achieve greater ranges of motion in all your lower-body movements and activate more muscle.

*All videos courtesy of Luka Hocevar and Vigor Ground Fitness

#1. Dumbbell Paused Squat Jump

This one is great for developing explosive power and the ability to decelerate your body after a jump or sprint. I use it often with the basketball players I train.

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand and stand with feet about hip-width apart. Keep your arms locked out and think about squeezing oranges in your armpits to keep the lats under tension.

Step 2. Retract your neck so your head isn’t sticking out in front of your body (think: “packed chin”). Your head, spine, and pelvis should form a long, straight line. Brace your core.

Step 3. Squat down until your knees are bent about 90 degrees (think: “half squat,” not a full squat). The dumbbells should be just outside your legs but not touching them.

Step 4. Pause a second at the bottom, and then explode upward. Apply as much force to the ground as possible, and imagine trying to touch your head to the ceiling.

Step 5. Land like a ninja—with soft knees, and as quietly as you can. Push your hips back as you touch down to help you decelerate. Think about it like this: if you were landing in a puddle, how would you do it so as not to make a huge splash?

Make sure you pause between reps to reset yourself as needed.

#2. Dumbbell Bulgarian Split Squat

One of my favorite lower-body exercises, the split squat builds strength, muscle, and stability that transfers over to athletic movements. It also supports gains on big barbell lifts like the deadlift and squat.

Step 1. Stand lunge-length in front of a single-leg squat stand (shown here) or bench. Hold dumbbells at your sides and rest the top of your back foot on the bench. Your back leg should be bent about 90 degrees (use this leg as little as possible throughout the exercise; you should feel almost no tension in it). Keep your arms locked out and think about squeezing oranges in your armpits to keep the lats under tension.

Step 2. Retract your neck so your head isn’t sticking out in front of your body (think: “packed chin”). Your head, spine, and pelvis should form a long, straight line. Brace your core.

Step 3. Hinge your hips back so your torso is angled forward, and lower your body until your rear knee is just above the floor. As you descend, your spine and shin should run parallel to each other.

Step 4. Think about pushing the floor away from you and feeling your whole foot contact it as you come back up to the starting position. Be careful not to fully lock out your front knee—it should be slightly bent at the top of each rep. Complete your reps on that side, and then switch sides and repeat.

#3. Dumbbell Step-Over Lunge

Looking for a “functional” exercise? How about one that works deceleration, acceleration, coordination and just about every muscle in the lower body? The step-over lunge is one of the most challenging lunge variations you can do, but once you’ve got it down, you’ll see huge results.

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand and stand with feet about hip-width apart. Keep your arms locked out and think about squeezing oranges in your armpits to keep the lats under tension.

Step 2. Retract your neck so your head isn’t sticking out in front of your body (think: “packed chin”). Your head, spine, and pelvis should form a long, straight line. Brace your core.

Step 3. Step backward with a slight hinge/lean in your hips so that you load your glutes. Control your descent, and softly touch the floor with your back knee.

Step 4. Drive through the floor with your front foot and step forward out of the lunge. Try not to put your foot down to rebalance yourself—just step straight into a forward lunge. Complete your reps on that side, and then switch sides and repeat.

Note: It’s OK if your knee travels in front of your toes at the end-range of a lunge. It’s not only safe, it’s actually healthy for the ankles, knees, and hips to develop stability in that range of motion.

#4. Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift

The RDL is the best way to teach a true hip-hinge movement, which is used in all sports and multiple daily activities. Starting the lift from the top rather than the bottom makes it safer, and the dumbbells help you keep the weight closer to your center of gravity than the barbell alternative.

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand at your sides and stand with feet about hip-width apart. Keep your arms locked out and think about squeezing oranges in your armpits to keep the lats under tension. Draw your shoulders back and down (think: “proud chest”).

Step 2. Retract your neck so your head isn’t sticking out in front of your body (think: “packed chin”). Your head, spine, and pelvis should form a long, straight line. Brace your core.

Step 3. Push your hips back like you’re trying to shut a car door behind you with your butt. Bend your knees slightly, and think about pulling yourself down with your hip flexors (the muscles on the front of your hips that raise your legs up) as you lower your torso. As you go down, allow the dumbbells to move slightly forward and around to the front of your thighs.

Go down until the dumbbells reach mid-shin level, or you feel a strong stretch in your hamstrings, and pause at the bottom. Your eyes should be looking about three feet in front of your toes. If you find yourself looking down at your feet or at the wall in front of you, your neck is out of alignment.

Be sure to keep your long-spine position. Don’t round your back.

Step 4. Extend your hips to come back up, and squeeze your glutes at the top of the rep.

#5. Dumbbell Single-Leg Kickstand Wall RDL

This is an incredible exercise for teaching great hinge form while putting the hip in abduction and internal rotation—skills that keep the hips healthy and athletic while also activating lots of glute muscle.

Step 1. Stand in front of a wall, facing away, and hold a dumbbell in your left hand. Bend the left knee, and push that foot back into the wall. Get a soft bend of the knee on the other leg. Draw your shoulder blades back and down, pack your chin, and get a long spine from your head to your pelvis.

Step 2. Bend your hips back while twisting your torso toward the right leg so that the dumbbell lines up in front of it. Think about getting your belly button to point at the outside of the knee. Go down until the dumbbell is at mid-shin level, or you feel a strong stretch in your hamstrings. Keep the left knee pulled in as you perform the RDL—don’t let it drift outward.

Be sure to maintain your long-spine position. Don’t round your back.

Step 3. Push the floor away as you come back up, and extend your hips fully. Complete your reps on that side, and then switch sides and repeat.

#6. Dumbbell Lateral Lunge with Reach

Most muscle-building exercises are done in the sagittal plane, where the movement occurs forward and back. Lateral lunges break you out of that groove, utilizing the frontal plane, which is so prominent in sports play. Fighters, football players, soccer players, and so on have to be able to move side to side without pulling a muscle or tripping over their feet. This move prepares them for it.

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell in your right hand and stand with feet about hip-width apart. Keep your arms locked out and think about squeezing an orange in your armpit to keep the lats under tension.

Step 2. Retract your neck so your head isn’t sticking out in front of your body (think: “packed chin”). Your head, spine, and pelvis should form a long, straight line. Brace your core.

Step 3. Lunge to your left side, making sure your left foot stays on the same plane as the right one. (Tip: do the exercise on turf, or some other area that has a line painted on it so you get some feedback. Placing a long exercise band on the floor can also work.) Make sure you step far enough so that you feel a stretch on the locked-out leg.

Step 4. Sit back into your hip (it’s a hinge/deadlift movement more than a squat), and make sure your knee aligns with your big toe on the left leg. If this is a problem, imagine pushing a $100 bill into the floor with the inside of your foot. As you lower into the lunge, twist your torso so you can nearly touch the dumbbell to your foot.

Step 5. Push off the lunging leg and come back to the starting position in one fluid motion. Complete your reps on that side, and then switch sides and repeat.

#7. Dumbbell Front-Foot Elevated Split Squat

I love this move for teaching a vertical squat pattern, where your hips and torso move straight down as opposed to more of a hip-hinge motion. This reduces shear forces on the spine. Most of my clients say their hips and low back feel great after doing these, even though their legs are on fire.

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell in your left hand and stand with your left foot on a weight plate or other platform that elevates it about two inches above the floor. Extend your right leg behind you. Keep your left arm locked out and think about squeezing an orange in your armpit to keep the lat under tension.

Step 2. Retract your neck so your head isn’t sticking out in front of your body (think: “packed chin”). Your head, spine, and pelvis should form a long, straight line. Brace your core.

Step 3. Rotate the hip of the rear leg forward so it’s square with the other hip, and begin sitting back into the hip that’s over the plate. Your rear thigh and knee must stay aligned with your right foot, so don’t let the knee turn inward when you rotate the hip.

Step 4. Actively drive your front foot into the plate, making sure your heel stays down, as you slowly lower your body until your rear knee is just above the floor. Stay as vertical as possible—think of your body like a canister. Your front knee will travel forward and you should aim to touch your hamstrings to your calf.

Step 5. Push off the front foot to raise your body back up. Think “elevator, not escalator,” so you push the plate away while staying vertical and not rising back on an angle. Rise until your rear leg is straight—your front leg should be well short of lockout.

#8. Dumbbell Goblet Squat

If you have trouble dialing in your squat form, the goblet squat is a great way to re-train yourself. It teaches you to stay upright and sink into your hips, and often leads to near-perfect squat mechanics right away. The goblet squat not only works your lower body, but requires a lot of strength and stability from your core and upper body as well. It’s great for reinforcing good posture when done correctly.

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell under your chin vertically, with both hands on the end of one bell. Stand with feet between hip and shoulder-width apart and turn your toes out about 30 degrees. Think about squeezing oranges in your armpits to keep the lats under tension. Draw your shoulders back and down (think: “proud chest”).

Step 2. Retract your neck so your head isn’t sticking out in front of your body (think: “packed chin”). Your head, spine, and pelvis should form a long, straight line. Brace your core.

Step 3. Drive your knees forward and pull yourself down into the squat using the hip flexors (the muscles on the front of the hips that raise your legs up). Stay as vertical as you can with your upper body, and go as deep as you can while keeping alignment from your head to your pelvis—your lower back should be neutral at the bottom (not rounded over or hyperextended). Your elbows should be able to touch the medial side of your knees in the bottom position.

Step 4. Push the floor away as you rise back up to stand tall.

Note: On all of the above exercises, it can help to think about keeping your ribs down. This means to avoid any hyperextension of your lower back that would cause your ribs to flare. If you focus on pulling the ribs down toward the pelvis, you’ll brace your core properly and create a neutral spine position. This promotes safety, and will ensure your legs work to the maximum.

What Muscles Will I Be Targeting?

The above exercises combined target every muscle group in the lower body (and a great many muscles in the upper body too, which provide stability), as well as the core. I’ll break down the major muscle groups targeted in each lift.

Dumbbell paused squat jump: glutes, quads, calves

Dumbbell Bulgarian split squat: glutes, quads, hamstrings, adductors

Dumbbell step-over lunge: quads, glutes, adductors

Dumbbell Romanian deadlift (RDL): hamstrings, glutes, spinal erectors, core

Dumbbell single-leg kickstand wall RDL: glutes, hamstrings, adductors, core

Dumbbell lateral lunge with reach: glutes, adductors

Dumbbell front-foot elevated split squat: quads, adductors, glutes, hamstrings

Dumbbell goblet squat: quads, glutes, upper back, core

How To Stretch Before A Dumbbell Leg Workout

An effective warmup should begin with some soft tissue work using a foam roller, lacrosse ball, or other tool that applies some pressure to the muscles to help them loosen up. Roll out your hips, hamstrings, quads, and any other areas of the lower body that may feel particularly tight. After that, try these three combination mobility drills that will open up your hips and knees while raising your core temperature. The goal with these is to further improve your ability to achieve the positions that the exercises in the workout require, so don’t skip them!

If one drill makes you feel tighter than another, spend more time on that one and focus on owning the positions. When you get to an uncomfortable point in the range of motion, take some deep breaths (long exhale, long inhale)—this will help loosen you up as well as help you to stabilize in the position.

Set a timer for 6–12 minutes, depending on how much time you can devote to your warmup, and go through the exercises as outlined until the time is up. It may end up being two rounds of each move, or five; just keep moving. If you’re extra tight/stiff, I recommend putting the timer on for 10 or more minutes.

1. Single-Leg Downward Dog to Spiderman Lunge with Quad Stretch

Reps: 3–5 (each side)

Step 1. Get into pushup position with your hands directly under your shoulders and your body in a straight line from head to toe.

Step 2. Raise your right leg off the floor as you push your body backward and raise your hips into the air. Keep your left leg as straight as possible and your heel flat on the floor. Drive your arms into the floor so that your palms stay flat.

Step 3. Step your right leg forward and plant it next to your right arm. Take a moment to extend your spine and hips so that you realign yourself—your body should form a straight line from your head to the heel of your left foot.

Step 4. Lower the left knee to the floor and bend that leg as you reach back with your left hand to grasp the ankle. Gently pull your heel closer to your butt so you feel a stretch in your quads. Shift your weight forward to intensify the stretch.

Step 5. Let your foot go, and return to pushup position. Repeat on the opposite side.

2. Squat to Stand with Walkout to Downward Dog + Single-Arm Reach

Reps: 3–5

Step 1. Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and toes turned out about 30 degrees.

Step 2. Bend over and grasp your toes. Squat down as low as you can, extending your spine as you do so that you end up in the bottom of a squat with your elbows inside your knees and a long spine. You can wiggle your hips around a bit to help you get comfortable in the bottom position.

Step 3. Walk your hands forward until you’re in a pushup position, and push your hips back and into the air.

Step 4. Twist your torso to the right and grasp the outside of your right knee with your left hand. Twist the other direction and grasp the opposite knee.

Step 5. Reverse the entire movement: Return to pushup position, walk yourself back to the bottom of the squat, and then stand up with your hips while grasping your toes.

3. Thai Sit with Shinbox Switch

Reps: 5 (each side)

Step 1. Sit on the floor with both knees bent. Your left leg should be in front of you and your right leg pointing behind. Keep a tall spine, and try to get both your sit bones flat on the floor.

Step 2. Extend your hips to come up on your knees. Extend your arms straight in front of you, and slowly lower your butt back to the floor.

Step 3. Rotate your right leg outward and your left leg inward so that you turn your body and achieve the same sitting position in the opposite direction. Rise up to your knees, and lower back down. Use your hands for balance as needed, but don’t use them for momentum to help you rise up.

How To Choose The Right Dumbbell Weight

On any dumbbell exercise, you’ll need to work up to the right weight gradually by doing what coaches call “ramp up” sets. Choose a very light weight to start, maybe 50% of the heaviest load you think you can handle for your work sets, and perform around 5 reps. Increase the weight by small increments (10–20 pounds) until you reach a load that you’re sure you can use—with good form—for the number of reps that the workout calls for. Take as many ramp up sets as you need, and don’t take any of the ramp up sets to failure—they’re just an extension of your warmup.

Be conservative with the weight you select for your first main work set—you can always increase the weight on your next set if the first one feels too light.

Note that the dumbbell paused squat jump is a power exercise and needs to be done as explosively as possible. Going too heavy will slow you down and thus defeat the purpose. Use your bodyweight alone for your first ramp up set. You won’t need much weight for the work sets.

Complete Dumbbell Leg Workout

This workout includes all the aforementioned exercises to give you a routine that builds athleticism, strength, and muscle size. You can run the program for four to six weeks, adding a work set to a few of the exercises as you see fit in the second or third week (add sets to the remaining exercises in the weeks that follow). You should also aim to increase the number of reps you perform and the loads you use over time. But don’t attempt to make any exercise harder until you’re sure you’ve got the form down properly.

Rest as needed between sets and between exercises. The squat jump will require more rest so you can restore maximum speed and power—maybe 2 minutes—while you may only need a minute or so break between sets of the lateral lunge.

Notice that you have a choice of moves you can do for exercises 2 and 3. You can opt for the Bulgarian split squat and Romanian deadlift if you want more of a muscle-building stimulus, or you can choose the step-over lunge and kickstand wall RDL if you want to prepare your body for better performance in soccer, football, basketball etc.

1. Dumbbell Paused Squat Jump

Sets: 3–4  Reps: 6–8

2. Dumbbell Bulgarian Split Squat, OR Dumbbell Step-Over Lunge

Sets: 3–4  Reps: 8 (each side)

3. Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift, OR Dumbbell Single-Leg Kickstand Wall RDL

Sets: 3  Reps: 12 (each side)

4. Dumbbell Lateral Lunge w/ Reach

Sets: 2  Reps: 10 (each side)

5. Dumbbell Front-Foot Elevated Split Squat

Sets: 2  Reps: 10 (each side)

Optional Finisher: Dumbbell Goblet Squat

Sets: 1–2  Reps: 20–25

Follow Luka on Instagram, @lukahocevar.

The post A Pro’s Guide To Dumbbell Leg Exercises and Workouts appeared first on Onnit Academy.

– The kettlebell goblet squat is often used to teach good squat technique, as it helps you to keep an upright torso and sit back with your hips.

– The goblet squat trains the core and upper back in addition to the lower body.

– If you have trouble doing the kettlebell goblet squat, a landmine squat could be a more effective alternative. If you’ve mastered the goblet squat, adding a curl at the bottom of the movement, or doing it on one leg, are good progressions.

Kettlebell Goblet Squat: How To Do It & Get Ripped

As the movie Dodgeball taught us, “If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball!” To some extent, the same logic can apply to squatting: if you can do a kettlebell goblet squat, you can do ANY kind of squat (or at least you’ll be able to learn much faster). The kettlebell goblet squat teaches sound movement mechanics for squatting, allowing you to work your legs without excess stress on your lower back or knees. It’s a foundational movement for anyone who likes to train with kettlebells, or who ultimately wants to train heavy back squats, front squats, power cleans, or a range of other more advanced movements.

We’ll start by showing you how to execute the kettlebell goblet squat with great form, tell you all the muscles it works and how, and then provide some alternative exercises you can use to become a sound and strong squatter.

Let the game begin!

How To Do The Kettlebell Goblet Squat

Step 1. Hold a kettlebell in front of your chest by the sides of its handle. Draw your shoulders back and downward (think: “proud chest”), and tuck your elbows in close to the bell—try to get your forearms as vertical as you can. Stand with your feet between hip- and shoulder-width apart, and turn your toes out a bit—up to 30 degrees if you need to.

Step 2. Tuck your tailbone and draw your ribs down so that your pelvis is parallel to the floor. Take a deep breath into your belly, and brace your core. Actively twist your feet into the floor, but don’t let them move. Think of your legs as screwdrivers, or that you’re standing on grass and trying to twist it up beneath you. You should feel the arches in your feet rise and your glutes tighten, creating tension in the lower body.

Step 3. Keeping a long spine from your head to your pelvis, push your hips back and squat down, as if sitting down into a chair. Squat as low as you can while keeping your head, spine, and pelvis aligned. Push your knees apart as you descend. You should feel most of your weight on your heels to mid-foot area. If you feel your lower back beginning to round, stop there, and come back up. Keep your torso as vertical as possible—you shouldn’t have to lean forward or work extra hard to hold the bell upright. Avoid bending or twisting to either side.

Step 4. Drive through your feet as you extend your hips and knees to come up.

Benefits of the Kettlebell Goblet Squat

First and foremost, the goblet squat is an excellent teaching tool for learning the classic squatting movement pattern correctly. When most people begin squatting, whether with their bodyweight or a barbell on their back, they have trouble sitting back on the descent and activating the muscles of their hips. They tend to lean forward excessively to maintain balance, and that can lead to a range of problems: squatting too shallow, rounding the lower back, letting the knees collapse inward, allowing the heels to rise off the floor, etc.

In the goblet squat, you hold a load in front of your body, and it acts as a counterbalance. As a result, you’ll feel more comfortable opening your hips and sitting back with them—you don’t feel like you’re going to fall backward when you begin the descent, because the weight of the kettlebell is gently pulling you forward. This allows you to squat deeply with an upright torso, and that makes it possible to activate the greatest amount of muscle throughout your legs, while minimizing shear forces on the spine. As you descend, your elbows naturally travel inside your knees, which is a reminder to push your knees out to make room for the elbows. Doing so helps your knees to align with your toes, and that prevents the knee pain so often associated with knees that collapse inward.

Positioning the kettlebell in front of the torso makes your core brace your spine more or less automatically, so you can argue that the goblet squat builds strong abs as well. Furthermore, holding the weight in front of the chest asks a lot of the shoulder and upper back muscles, and fighting to maintain good shoulder alignment strengthens your posture. This can pay big dividends if you go on to train more challenging types of squats, such as the back squat and front squat. It can also help make you stronger at presses and pullups/rows too.

Due to the vertical torso position, the goblet squat is much easier on the lower back than a back squat is. If you recently injured your low back doing back squats, or just can’t get the hang of them, the goblet squat is a great squat variation to regress to in order to clean up your form. In this regard, it has a lot in common with the front squat, and goblet squats are often used to build up to training front squats. With the lighter loads used, however, the goblet squat is more user-friendly and easier to master.

Because the goblet squat is relatively easy to master, it works well in circuits and other fast-paced workouts that train the whole body. You can pick up a kettlebell, knock out a set, and move on to the next thing. Only the most advanced athletes or lifters could be as efficient with back squats and other barbell variations, so it’s no wonder why the goblet squat is popular in exercise classes and for home-gym training.

Muscles Used In the Kettlebell Goblet Squat

The kettlebell goblet squat is really a full-body exercise, but it’s treated mainly as a lower-body lift. Here are the muscles it recruits, from the top down.

• Upper back (traps, rhomboids)
• Deltoids
• Lats
• Wrist flexors and extensors
• Rectus abdominis, and deep core muscles
• Spinal erectors
• Quadriceps
• Glutes
• Hamstrings
• Calves

While the goblet squat does work a lot of muscle, it’s not a great choice for someone looking to make big muscle gains—at least not long-term. It will certainly help to improve your squat technique and strengthen your back, legs, and core, but as you progress your loading on the goblet squat, you will reach a point where your upper body can’t support the weight anymore, while your legs still feel strong. At this stage, it’s wise to advance to front squats or back squats, which will let you go heavy enough to ensure that your quads gets trained to the fullest.

However, that isn’t to say that goblet squats can’t be done with heavy weight, especially if kettlebells or dumbbells are all you have to train with. Some lifters have done reps with well over 100 pounds, which makes for an impressive test of overall body strength. But the difficulty and awkwardness of getting such heavy weight into position makes moving on to a different type of squat a more practical progression.

How To Stretch Before Doing The Kettlebell Goblet Squat

The kettlebell goblet squat is as beginner-friendly a squat as there is, but it still requires mobility in some key muscle groups to perform correctly. You can loosen up your ankles, hips, and quads beforehand with these drills from Natalie Higby (@natalie.higby on Instagram), co-founder of The Durable Athlete. Perform each for 2–3 sets of 5–10 reps.

Ankle Roll On Edges of Feet

Step 1. Stand with feet about shoulder-width apart and place your hands on your knees. Begin circling your knees outward (left knee counter-clockwise; right knee clockwise) while rolling on the outer edges of your feet. Raise  your heels as your knees come forward, and move slowly and smoothly.

Step 2. Perform your reps in one direction, and then repeat in the opposite direction. If you have trouble keeping your balance, hold onto a sturdy object for support.

Straight-Leg Hip Circle

Step 1. Hold onto a sturdy object for support. Tuck your tailbone under and draw your ribs down, so that your pelvis is level with the floor, and brace your core. Raise one leg in the air in front of you, keeping your knee straight, and pointing your toes up. (If it’s difficult to keep the knee straight, raise the knee only to where it’s about to bend; no higher.) Allow a soft bend in the leg that’s supporting you. 

Step 2. Rotate your leg 90 degrees out to your side, and then begin turning your toes toward the floor as you draw the leg behind your body. Return your foot to the floor. That’s one hip circle.

Step 3. Repeat in the opposite direction, engaging your glutes as you lift your leg behind you, and then rotating the foot outward. Continue alternating directions each rep. Again, if you can’t raise your leg high without it bending, keep your leg lower to the floor and make circles from there.

Kneeling Hip Extension

Step 1. Kneel on the floor in a tall position—shoulders and hips stacked over your knees. Your toes can be pointed into the floor, or flat. Place your hands on your ribs and pelvis and draw your ribs down so that the two areas pull closer together. Your pelvis should be level with the floor. Brace your core, and squeeze your glutes.

Step 2. Keeping a long spine, begin leaning back slowly, so that you feel tension in your quads. Go as low as you can control, and then bend your hips to sit on your heels. Extend your hips to come back up to a tall-kneeling position. Over time, work to lower yourself a little further before you bend your hips.

Alternatives to the Kettlebell Goblet Squat

Once you’ve gotten the basic goblet squat down, you can experiment with the goblet squat with curl. In this variation, you squat down, lower the kettlebell until your arms are straight, and curl it back up. Doing so helps reinforce good posture in the bottom of the squat. If you can keep your spine and pelvis alignment while you move the kettlebell further in front of your body, you can be sure that your squat pattern is strong and stable. It’s also a great way to make you slow down each rep of the exercise. Once they realize that the goblet squat makes it much easier to squat properly, many people have a tendency to rush their reps, bouncing out of the bottom. Adding the curl forces you to be more intentional with your movement and maintain muscle tension throughout the range of motion. This can help prevent your knees from bending inward or outward and your tailbone from tucking under too much, and it will lead to better results.

Kettlebell Goblet Squat With Curl

Step 1. Set up as you did to perform the regular kettlebell goblet squat.

Step 2. Squat down. When you’re as low as you can safely go, hold the position. Extend your elbows, lowering the weight until it’s just above the floor.

Step 3. Curl the kettlebell back up to your chest, and come back up out of the squat.

Kettlebell Bulgarian Split Squat with Goblet Hold

Single-leg squatting is a must for athletes, since so many sports movements require you to push off or land on one leg again and again. The Bulgarian split squat (aka rear-foot elevated split squat) is perhaps the most challenging single-leg movement, and when it’s done holding a kettlebell in the goblet squat position, you combine the core and back training of the goblet squat with the increased range of motion and stability demands of single-leg work.

Step 1. Stand about lunge-length distance in front of a bench. Hold the kettlebell in front of your chest as you would to goblet squat, and rest the top of one foot on the bench behind you. Your back knee should be bent about 90 degrees.

Step 2. Bend your front knee, lowering your body until your rear knee is just above the floor, and your front thigh is about parallel to the floor. Make sure your front heel doesn’t rise off the floor. If it does, place your foot further in front of you. Your spine should run parallel to your front shin throughout the exercise. So it’s OK if your shin is angled forward a bit in the bottom position, and your back matches it.

Landmine Squat

While the goblet squat is ideal for beginners, some people will find that they still have trouble keeping their torso upright while performing it. In this case, using a barbell in a landmine unit can be a great solution. With a landmine squat, the load is held in front of the body the same as it is with a goblet squat, but the bar is anchored to the ground and travels on an arc. This all but guarantees that you’ll stay tall while you squat, because if you bend too far forward, the bar will poke you in the chest.

Step 1. Load one end of a barbell into the cylinder of a landmine. (If you don’t have a landmine, the corner of a room can suffice; just protect the walls with a towel.) Hold the opposite end of the bar with both hands and stand in your squat stance. Twist your feet into the floor to create tension in the lower body as described in the goblet squat directions above.

Step 2. Lower into the squat as deeply as you can, and then extend your hips and knees to come back up.

The post Kettlebell Goblet Squat: How To Do It & Get Ripped appeared first on Onnit Academy.

The good morning has been popular in bodybuilding and powerlifting circles forever, as it’s a tremendous exercise for the glutes, hamstrings, and lower back, and has the potential to add pounds to your squat and deadlift max. It can teach you to hinge at the hips and fire the muscles of your posterior in unison for better running, jumping, and overall explosiveness. But if you don’t respect it, you can end up with a back injury that plagues you for life—and that’s exactly what happened to the legendary Bruce Lee when he tried the good morning.

Here’s the ultimate guide to mastering this age-old lower-body builder for maximum safety and effectiveness.

What Are Good Mornings?

First, you need to understand what a hip hinge is. As LA trainer Ben Bruno (@benbrunotraining on Instagram) likes to explain it, a hinge is basically the movement you make when you have a boner in the morning and you have to pee: keeping a long spine, you bend your hips back, lowering your torso toward the floor. (For ladies reading this who may prefer a different, but no less crude analogy, imagine mooning a crowd.) That’s a hip hinge, and it’s a basic movement pattern we should all know how to do properly. Any time you pick something up from the floor, whether it’s a baby or a barbell, you’re hinging at the hips. The hip hinge is also necessary for jumping and other explosive movements, such as a power clean, and a football player couldn’t get into a three-point stance without one.

The good morning is a hip hinge in which external load is carried across the back of the shoulders. You hold a bar on your back and bend your hips as far as you can while keeping your head, spine, and pelvis aligned. (Alternatively, a band can be used, wrapped around the back of your neck and under your feet.) Legend has it that the good morning got its name because it looks like a stretch you’d perform as soon as you get out of bed. Imagine doing it without load, while yawning, and with arms reaching overhead, and you can kind of see why the name stuck.

Apart from where you hold the weight you’re lifting, a good morning really isn’t that different from other hip hinge movements like the Romanian deadlift or hip thrust. Holding the weight so far from your center of gravity makes the exercise less stable than these other examples, so you can’t go as heavy, and you have to be even more aware of your spine position throughout the lift. But on the plus side, the good morning seems to have more carryover to the back squat because its mechanics are so similar. It’s also a good alternative to the conventional deadlift, as it’s less stressful to the body as a whole, takes grip strength out of the equation, and allows you to perform more training volume. (You might only be able to handle one or two deadlift workouts per week without running into problems with recovery, but you could do several sets of good mornings throughout the week safely.)

What Muscles Do Good Mornings Work?

The good morning activates your body’s biggest muscles. To perform the hinge, the glutes and hamstrings have to work through a long range of motion. Stabilizing that motion are the back muscles—ranging from the rhomboids, teres major and minor, and lats, down to the spinal erectors—the core, including the quadratus lumborum, the deepest abdominal muscle and essential for good posture, and your calves.

Good mornings also have a way of training you to breathe and brace your core properly, says Kelly Starrett, DPT, creator of The Ready State and author of Becoming a Supple Leopard and Waterman 2.0. This can have much farther-reaching benefits than just giving you muscles you can see in the mirror. To prevent the weight from pulling your torso to the floor, you have to create stability by activating your diaphragm and taking air deep into your abdomen. (More on this under How To Correctly Perform a Good Morning below.) “This allows you to access the pelvic floor,” says Starrett, the muscles that control the bowels and bladder. Strengthening this area helps prevent medical problems like incontinence and pelvic floor prolapse. Yes, that means good mornings can play a role in keeping your guts where they belong—inside your body.

Are Good Mornings Effective?

Just about every sport requires the ability to hip hinge, so good mornings are a useful exercise for athletes of every stripe. However, muscle-seekers and heavy lifters rely on them most.

They’re a favorite of bodybuilders who want to put more size on their glutes and hamstrings, and powerlifters who are striving to build their squat and deadlift. The good morning is particularly good for squatters, writes Bret Contreras, PhD, CSCS,*D, in his book Glute Lab, a guide to glute exercises. “The good morning helps reduce the risk of injury in a squat-gone-wrong situation, when the hips shoot up out of the bottom position, which is a common occurrence when squatting with maximal loads. Because the good morning mimics this exact movement pattern, the rationale is that the lifter strengthens the muscles used to carry out the movement, which might help prevent injuries if or when the fault occurs.”

Some Olympic weightlifters also use good mornings as an assistance lift for the clean and jerk and snatch. Barbell complexes, a form of conditioning circuit that’s grown out of weightlifting training, often feature the good morning. To do a complex, you perform several barbell exercises that feed into one another, all without putting the bar down. A complex could begin with five reps of the hang snatch, and then, since the bar finishes in an overhead position, go to an overhead squat for five reps. From there, the lifter can lower and press the weight behind the neck (five reps), and then lower it back to shoulder level, where he/she can finish the complex with five reps of good mornings. Used this way, one could argue that the good morning is an effective exercise for fat loss and cardio.

Finally, the good morning stretches the glutes and hamstrings at their end ranges of motion, making it highly valuable for improving hip flexion mobility. This is important for being able to squat, lunge, and crouch low, and access the full strength and power potential of these muscles.

“Good mornings might have started in modern weight rooms,” says Starrett, “but we see a similar pattern in practices like yoga’s sun salutation. People figured out a long time ago that you need to be able to hinge, extend the spine, and keep your hips, pelvis, and lumbar spine coordinated, organized, and stable. The good morning is a great expression of this notion.”

How To Stretch Before Doing Good Mornings

Perform the following mobility drills to prepare your body for the good morning. Do 5–10 reps for each.

Mountain Climber

Cat Cow

Mobile Table

How to Correctly Perform a Good Morning

If you’re new to the good morning, practice it with a PVC pipe, dowel, or broomstick before you use a barbell (yes, you can do this at home, if you like). The reason for this is twofold: the light weight of the stick will allow you to learn the mechanics of the movement with minimal injury risk, and its shape will provide you immediate tactile feedback on your form.

Position the stick vertically down your back (reach one arm behind your head and one behind your back to secure it), and try to maintain three points of contact with it throughout the exercise. The back of your head, your upper back, and butt should touch the stick at all times. When you can keep the stick against those three points, you know you’re keeping your head, spine, and pelvis aligned and neutral, which is critical for performing the good morning safely.

When you think you’ve got it down, move on to an empty barbell, and then load the bar gradually from there.

Step 1. Place a barbell in a power rack and grasp it with hands shoulder-width apart. Step under the bar and position it along the back of your shoulders. Draw your shoulders down and back (think: “proud chest”). Nudge the bar out of the rack, and step back, setting your feet hip-width apart. You can point your toes straight ahead, or turn them out slightly, to the 11 and 1 o’clock positions.

Step 2. Draw your ribs down, as if pulling them into your hips. Take a deep breath into your belly, trying to expand it 360 degrees. Now brace your core. You should feel very stable throughout your torso. Twist your feet into the floor so that you feel tension in your hips and the arches in your feet rise—keep this tension throughout the set. Focus your eyes on the floor a few feet in front of you.

Step 3. Soften your knees, and begin bending your hips back, lowering your torso toward the floor while keeping your head, spine, and pelvis in a straight line. Your lower back should be neutral—not excessively arched, and certainly not rounded over. Think about pulling your butt and hips straight backward. Continue hinging your hips until you feel a strong stretch in your hamstrings, or you think you can’t go any further without losing your stable spine position. Allow your knees to bend naturally.

Step 4. Squeeze your glutes as you reverse the motion and extend your hips to stand tall again.

As you get familiar with the movement, you can experiment with variations in your stance and grip. For an even greater glute and hamstring hit, you can perform good mornings with a wider stance, greater knee bend, and more toe flare. This better mimics the way most people squat, so it can have greater carryover to that exercise. You can also hold the bar higher up on your back—on your traps rather than the rear deltoids. Done with a narrower stance and less knee bend (as shown above), this version can help build your deadlift (assuming you deadlift with a conventional stance).

“If someone hasn’t done good mornings before, or we identify some technique errors, we regress back to a PVC pipe and see if they can perform 10 reps,” says Starrett. “Then we test again to make sure they’re breathing comfortably throughout the exercise. The next step is typically a regular 45-pound barbell, although some people find it easier to hold a light dumbbell behind their head as they hinge. This isn’t really about equipment or the muscles used—it’s about establishing sustainable motor patterns and testing their integrity.”

How To Fit Good Mornings Into Your Workout

As mentioned above, good mornings work well as an assistance exercise for the back squat and conventional deadlift. You can perform them after you do one of those main lifts, or on a separate day elsewhere in your training week. In Glute Lab, Contreras recommends using 2–3 sets of 8–12 reps as a starting point.

Starrett says that he personally puts light good mornings at the start of a hip hinge-focused session, progressing from there to kettlebell swings or deadlifts. “The good morning can help groove the hip hinge pattern,” he says, “and also illustrates areas that are still sore from previous sessions and might need some mobility work after you’re done.” Starrett cautions that you don’t need to go very heavy on good mornings to see results, no matter where you choose to place them. “A couple sets of 10 with a light weight will still challenge you.” And whatever weight you use, work up to it slowly.

How to Prevent Good Mornings Causing Back Injuries

While the good morning is a safe exercise when done properly, many lifters have injured their lower backs performing it—including martial arts icon Bruce Lee. While reports vary, it seems that The Dragon was working out sometime in 1969, and skipped or rushed his warmup. Lee performed a good morning with around 135 pounds (approximately his bodyweight), and injured a sacral nerve. (No, he wasn’t kicked in the back by Wong Jack Man, as the movie Dragon: The Bruce Lee story posited.) After a long layoff, he was able to train again, but supposedly battled back pain for the rest of his life.

If Lee—a man who looked like he was built from coiled steel springs—can hurt himself doing good mornings, you can too. So take every precaution.

When people hurt their backs on the good morning, deadlift, or any other hip hinge, it’s often assumed that the spine went into unwanted flexion (you rounded your lower back), but Starrett states that improperly executed extension is more often to blame. That is, coming up out of the bottom of the movement too fast, or with too much of an arch.

“Go lighter and slower than your instinct tells you,” says Starrett. “Also, make sure you’re not going down too far—imagine reaching into a crib but not picking up your baby.”

If you have a history of lower back pain, the good morning may not be for you, at least until you’re sure the injury has healed. You can work on back extensions, Romanian deadlifts, and single-leg Romanian deadlifts in the meantime, and get a very similar training effect.

Another common mistake is to let your weight shift over your toes, says Starrett, “which, if overdone, can compromise your mechanics. Instead, make sure you apply pressure evenly throughout your feet for the duration of the movement, particularly when you start to hip hinge. This seems like a small thing, but will have a big impact on your lumbo-pelvic organization, and how well you’re able to maintain force production.”

The post Good Mornings: The Exercise Your Workout Needs appeared first on Onnit Academy.

The two routines that follow, courtesy of New York City transformation coach Jeb Stuart Johnston (visit him at foodonthemind.com), take a bodybuilding approach to leg training, but that doesn’t mean squatting with weight that can bend a barbell. In fact, it doesn’t even mean going to a gym. You can do both workouts in your home. One demands only a band and a light dumbbell or kettlebell, and the other requires no weights all.

How do you get an effective leg blast like that? Let Johnston walk you through it.

A Killer Leg Workout for Bands and Dumbbells

“The first workout starts you off getting a good pump in your hamstrings,” says Johnston. You’ll do leg curls just as you would on a machine, but with a band instead (we like the short light one available at elitefts.net). These are nearly as easy to set up as the machine version, but they offer even more tension at the top of the movement, where your hams are at their strongest. When your hamstrings are warmed up and full of blood, your knees and hips will be also, and that sets you up for safer squatting when you hit your quads.

For your squat movement, Johnston opts for the Spanish squat, in which you wrap a band around the back of your knees while the other end is attached to a sturdy object. The tension of the band helps to keep you upright, so that you can squat vertically and deeply, keeping the stress squarely on your quad muscles and off your knees. If you have a history of knee pain, or you’re over 40 and a little banged up, you may want to make this squat a staple in your leg training from now on. It’s a game-changer.

“After that, we stretch the quads out and fill them with blood,” says Johnston, referring to the walking lunges that come next. Lastly, you’ll do good mornings to finish off the glutes and hamstrings. If you’ve had bad experiences with this movement in the past because you did it with a barbell on your back, fear not. This version requires only a band, and is much easier on your lumbar spine. You’ll really be able to focus on the hinge movement, stretching your glutes and hams at the bottom, and squeezing them to stand up straight. Bonus points: “As an optional finisher for those masochists out there, you can end with kettlebell swings,” says Johnston. This will get your heart rate up and burn some calories while you drive more blood into the posterior chain muscles.

Directions: Perform the exercises in the order shown. Complete 3 sets of 10–20 reps for each (except where otherwise noted), resting 45–90 seconds between sets. Aim to perform more reps, or one additional set for each exercise, every time you repeat the workout.

1 Banded Leg Curl

Step 1. Attach an elastic loop exercise band to a sturdy object and step into the open loop. Turn around and lie on the floor, chest down, with the band around your ankles. Extend your legs. Make sure you’re far enough away from the attachment point to put tension on the band.

Step 2. Tuck your pelvis so it’s perpendicular to the floor, draw your ribs down, and brace your core. Your body should form a long line from your head to your hips, with your weight supported on your forearms and knees. Take a deep breath into your belly, expanding your rib cage and shoulder blades.

Step 3. Contract your hamstrings and bend your knees to draw your heels toward your butt, until your lower legs are perpendicular to the floor. Squeeze your hamstrings at the top, holding the position a moment. Slowly extend your knees again.

2 Spanish Squat

Step 1. Stand in the loop of the band you just used for the leg curl, hooking it around the back of your knees, and face the attachment point. Step back to put tension on the band. Draw your ribs down and tuck your pelvis under so that it’s perpendicular to your spine. Stand with your feet between hip and shoulder-width apart, and your toes turned slightly outward.

Step 2. Slowly lower your body into a squat, maintaining a long line from your head to your hips as you descend. Drive your knees outward and sit back. Go down as far as you can without losing your alignment, allowing the band to support your body as you descend. If you can’t go to where your thighs are at least parallel to the floor, elevate your heels and inch or so by standing on blocks or weight plates.

3 Walking Lunge

Step 1. From a standing position, take a big step forward with one leg and lower your body until your rear knee nearly touches the floor and your front thigh is parallel to the floor. Keep your torso upright.

Step 2. Come up from the lunge while stepping forward with the rear leg to perform another lunge. Continue lungeing forward for as many reps as possible.

4 Banded Good Morning

Step 1. Loop the exercise band around the back of your neck and stand on the free loop with feet shoulder-width apart. Steady the band with your hands, and align your head, spine, and pelvis, as described above. Take a deep breath into your belly.

Step 2. Bend your hips back, shifting your weight to your heels, and allow your knees to bend as needed. Continue until you feel a strong stretch in your hamstrings. Maintain your head, spine, and pelvis alignment. Squeeze your glutes as you come back up and lock out your hips.

5 Kettlebell/Dumbbell Swing (Optional)

Reps: 100 total

Step 1. Place the kettlebell (or a dumbbell) on the floor and stand behind it with feet between hip and shoulder-width apart. Keeping your head, spine, and pelvis aligned, bend your hips back so you can reach down and grasp the kettlebell handle with both hands. Draw your shoulder blades together and down—think “proud chest.” Take a deep breath into your belly and brace your core. Focus your eyes on a s spot on the floor a few feet in front of you.

Step 2. Extend your hips to lift the weight off the floor, and then hike it back between your legs. When you feel a stretch in your hamstrings, squeeze your glutes and reverse the momentum to explosively extend your hips and swing the kettlebell up to eye level. Control the descent and allow the weight to swing between your legs again to feed into the next rep.

Perform 100 total reps in the fewest number of sets possible. Rest as needed between sets.

The Ideal Lower-Body Workout Without Weights

In the second workout option, which is bodyweight only, you’ll focus on training density. That is, doing a lot of work in a short time, and aiming to do even more work in that same period in subsequent workouts. Without equipment to tax your leg muscles, you’ll have to keep the pace fast and the reps high, so a brisk circuit is used here. “If you’re accustomed to training with heavy slag iron,” says Johnston, doing shorter sets and taking longer rests, “this will be tough. However, this workout will have your legs pumped so full of blood they will feel like they’re popping.” And that means they’re going to grow.

Directions: Perform the exercises as a circuit, completing one set of each in turn. For each move, you’ll perform reps for 40 seconds, and then rest 20 seconds, and then go on to the next exercise. Rest 3 minutes at the end of the circuit, and then repeat for 3 total rounds of the circuit. Track your reps and try to perform more in the same amount of time every time you repeat the workout.

1 Close-Stance Heel-Elevated Squat

Step 1. Place weight plates or blocks on the floor, and rest your heels on them with feet hip-width apart.

Step 2. Without letting your feet actually move, try to screw both legs into the floor as if you were standing on grass and wanted to twist it up—you’ll feel your glutes tighten and the arches in your feet rise. Take a deep breath into your belly and bend your hips back. Bend your knees and lower your body down. Push your knees out as you descend. Go as low as you can while keeping your head, spine, and pelvis aligned, and then extend your hips and knees to return to standing.

2 Sliding Leg Curl

Step 1. Lie on your back on the floor, and place furniture sliders or similar plastic discs under your heels (if you have access to a waxed floor, towels can work as well). Position your feet right behind your butt with your knees bent. Tuck your pelvis under, take a deep breath into your belly, and brace your core. Drive your heels into the floor to raise your hips to full extension.

Step 2. Slowly extend your legs until you feel you’re about to lose tension in your hamstrings, and then bend your legs, sliding your heels back toward you.

3 Alternating Reverse Lunge

Step 1. From a standing position, step back with one leg and lower your body until your rear knee nearly touches the floor and your front thigh is parallel to the floor.

Step 2. Step back up to the starting position, and repeat on the opposite leg.

4 Frog Pump

Step 1. Lie on your back on the floor and bend your knees 90 degrees. Bring the soles of your feet together, and rest your ankles on the floor. Drive the backs of your arms into the floor at about 45 degrees to your torso. Tuck your pelvis slightly so that it’s perpendicular to the floor, and brace your core.

Step 2. Drive your knees outward as you push through the outer edges of your feet to raise your hips off the floor. Rise until your glutes are fully contracted.

5 Alternating Jumping Lunge

Step 1. Lower your body into a lunge positon with your rear knee just above the floor and your front thigh parallel to the floor. Explode upward, jumping and switching your legs in mid air.

Step 2. Land with the opposite leg in front and control your body position into another deep lunge. Use the rebound effect to begin the next rep.

The post The Ultimate Leg Day Workout For Your Home Gym appeared first on Onnit Academy.

The reason it’s tough is that to build more mass with just bodyweight training means you’ll have to have a TON of patience, commitment, and dedication. Shoot, this goes with any training.

However, when it comes to building mass with bodyweight training it’s all about progression and if you want to get yourself stronger, faster, and in this case, BIGGER, you’ve got to force your body to adapt by making things harder over time.

Now, before I get into sharing my top 3 methods on how you can build up more athletic muscle with just bodyweight training alone, let me make myself clear in stating the fact that if you truly want to build more athletic mass in the fastest time possible, bodyweight training alone isn’t going to be your best bet for this.

Obviously training with external weights like barbells, dumbbells, and kettlebells will always be your best way to slap on functional mass quick, but that doesn’t mean you can’t put those tools aside for a while and still achieve gains in powerful muscle.

So, with that being said, let me dig into some of my favorite methods for adding mass onto your frame with just bodyweight training.

Bodyweight Workout For Mass #1 – Bodyweight POWER / STRENGTH Contrast Training.

This method is by far one of my favorite ways to train in general.

Start off with a low rep power-based exercise first to get the body firing on all cylinders, then finish the set off with a strength-based exercise that works the same movement pattern second to add more volume.

I like to do this with weighted movements a TON, but I love doing it with just bodyweight training as well. One of my favorite examples of this is when I train specifically to build up the chest.

A go-to set up for this would be first to hit a set of 5-10 explosive plyo push ups where you’d want each of these reps to be as explosive as possible.

After you finish those you’d then move directly to a strength-based movement working the same plane of motion where in this case you’d go to some regular push ups or ring push ups to increase the intensity and crank these out for as many reps as you could get done just stopping a few reps short of failure.

Here’s some other example of this set up:

Lower Body

A1: Squat Jump x 6-10
A2: Bodyweight Pause Squats x 20

B1: Lunge Jumps x 5-8 / Leg
B2: Step Ups x 10 / Leg

C1: Broad Jumps x 5-10
C2: Single Leg RDL x 15 / Leg

Upper Body

A1: Plyo Push Ups x 5-10
A2: Bar or Ring Strict Dips x sub max

B1: Kipping Chest To Bar Pull Up x 5
B2: Strict Pull Up x sub max

C1: Explosive Recline Row x 5-10
C2: Feet Elevated Recline Row x sub max

***Quick Notes on this method –It’s best to try and go directly from the power movement right into the 2nd movement with little to no rest – Do anywhere from 3-5 sets with 60-90 secs between sets and AVOID taking any of your movements to failure – we want QUALITY reps NOT, slow, grinding reps – there’s a time an place for that which I go into in Method #3 below.

Bodyweight Workout For Mass #2 – Density Acclimation Training.

My next go-to method for building up more mass with just bodyweight training is what I like to call, “Density Acclimation Training.” This set up is all about forcing your body to grow via progressive gains in volume over time.

The more volume you add in over time, the more you force your body to adapt by either growing bigger or getting itself stronger.

I many cases, you get BOTH. Take a look at some of the bodies that Olympic Gymnasts have.

These guys do LOADS and LOADS of volume of the same movements over and over and what happens over time is they grow because their bodies are forced to deal with the amount of volume they have to take on overtime.

Now, the set up for this method is pretty simple – pick two movements that work different planes of motion then use them in a classic superset fashion.

For example, You’d do 10 push ups then immediately do five pull ups back to back with little to no rest between movements. Repeat that 4-5 sets total taking about a full minute for rest in between sets.

BOOM. Lots of work done in a short period. Kind of cool I know, but this isn’t anything entirely new. The KEY to making this work for you is in how you use it over time in a progressive manner because again, that’s what it’s all about if we want to build mass = Increasing the amount of total volume you get done over time.

So, using the example above this is how we’d get this done.

● Week 1 – You’d do 5 sets of each movement (push ups x 10 / pull ups x 5).
● Week 2 – You’d do 6 sets of each movement with the SAME reps on each.
● Week 3 – You’d go back down to 5 sets of each movement but INCREASE the REPS of each to 15 and 10.
● Week 4 – You’d now go with 6 sets of each movement with the SAME reps on each from Week 3.
● Week 5 – (DELOAD) 4 Sets of each movement at the original reps you did in Week 1.

See where this is going?? In short what you do is slowly increase the amount of total volume you’d do each week, which makes it increasingly harder and harder over time.

You stick with this, and you’ll grow like a weed. I usually use this set up for around 4-6 weeks max then change things up or take a DELOAD week by cutting back the total volume (as you can see I added in for Week 5).

Something to keep in mind for when it comes to gaining mass is how it’s not just about the work you put in, but rather about the amount of REST and RECOVERY you allow yourself to get.

YES, you need to put in the work to beat your muscles down, but it’s only when we allow ourselves to recover when we truly grow new mass and strength.

So before I move onto my final bodyweight training method for mass, I thought I’d share another way I like to use “Density Acclimation Training” which is with the “AMRAP” method.

If you don’t yet now, “AMRAP” stands for “As Many Rounds (or reps) As Possible” and it’s truly one of my favorite methods to use. This setup is also simple (but can get BRUTAL).

Taking the example I used above with doing 10 push-ups immediately followed up 5 pull ups back to back, instead of just doing a fixed amount of sets, you’d now do the two movements for a set amount of time.

So, in other words, you’d crank 10 push ups then 5 pull ups and keep doing so for a let’s say 5 minutes. Maybe you get 4 sets of each in that time, perhaps not. You just get As Many Rounds As Possible in 5 minutes.

The week after you’d keep the reps the same and try to increase the total amount of volume you got the week before.

This adds an extra bit of challenge that always makes things more fun and exciting as when you have a set amount of volume you know you were able to get the week before; it pushes you hard to get to that same number or better.

After you’re able to increase the volume with the same amount of time, you can then increase the time up to 6 minutes, OR you increase the reps to 12 push ups and 6 pull up and keep the time the same.

Either way works as there’re many ways you could switch things up to progress.

The bottom line is to make sure and increase your overall volume each time, so you earn the right to advance ahead.

Good stuff.

***Quick Notes on this method –It’s important to focus in on QUALITY reps NOT, slow, grinding reps – Just like with Method #1 – avoid pushing your body into failure when you’re doing movements – there’s a time and place for that which I go into more detail next…

Bodyweight Workout For Mass #3 – Using Failure To Your Advantage

With this last method, it’s all about knowing when to take your bodyweight training movements to failure and when not to.

Most people train to failure every single set which is a major mistake that actually can cause you to go ass backward with your progress in strength and muscle gain.

YES – we want to go to failure now and then, but NOT all the time. The primary reason why you want to avoid this is, so you give yourself a better chance of recovering from your workouts especially if you’re trying to get a ton of progressive volume over time.

Trust me, if you always go to failure, your progress in adding more volume week after week is NOT going to go well. I know how it goes first hand…

Now, as I mentioned before, this isn’t to say you shouldn’t ever take your bodyweight training to failure. It is after all “the struggle” we put ourselves through from time to time that ultimately helps us grow.

If you’re going to go to failure with your bodyweight training movements, I always recommend you cut back on your total sets or make sure to decrease your overall volume. The rule of thumb here is it’s either training to failure OR volume.

You can’t have both and expect great results in return.

So, how do you use FAILURE to your advantage?? Well, you use the minimum effective dose to get the job done. With this, the saying, “More is Never Better” needs to come into play.

Because when it comes down to training to failure, “BETTER is BETTER.”

That’s the ONLY way it works. So with that being said, let’s look at how I would use training to failure properly.

I’ll just use push-ups as an example:

● Week 1 – Push Ups 4 sets x sub max reps
● Week 2 – Push Ups 5 x sub max
● Week 3 – Push Ups 2 x MAX FAILURE reps each set
● Week 4 – (DELOAD) – Push Ups 3 x sub max

For the 1st two weeks, you train using a fixed amount of sets while only going to sub max reps and AVOIDING failure. You’d increase the volume for Week 2 then on Week 3; you’d hammer the movement with just 2 MAX FAILURE sets.

These need to be ALL-OUT to complete failure for it to work. Push the limits.

The week after you’d come back with a tapered week to allow for a bit of recovery than from there, you could get back into the same set up as Week 1 to 3 is while increasing total volume for all weeks.

So something like this:

● Week 1 – Push Ups 5 x sub max
● Week 2 – Push Ups 6 x sub max
● Week 3 – Push Ups 3 x MAX FAILURE each set
● Week 4 – (DELOAD) – Push Ups 3 x sub max

The over scope of training to failure is to help you totally break down your muscles, so they come back stronger and bigger, but if you’re always doing this week after week, you’ll not going to allow enough time for recovery.

Remember at the beginning of this article how I hit on the importance of having a TON of patience, commitment, and dedication…

Well, there it is. So, there’s 3 of my go-to Bodyweight Training Methods for Mass. Have fun using these methods for new gains in athletic muscle!

The post 3 Ways to Set Up Your Bodyweight Workout For Mass appeared first on Onnit Academy.