For this article, we will present to you a convenient training program with two accents: Thighs and buttocks. You can include these two workouts in your weekly weight loss program. The good thing about this program is that it requires no equipment and can be done at home or even outside.
Who is this program meant for?
The program is designed for intermediate and advanced trainees. This means that you will need some basic skills to perform the exercises safely at home. You can complete the whole workout within 30 to 40 minutes, plus another 15 to 20 minutes for the cardio workout after that.
Secondly, although the exercises described below are also suitable for men, we believe they will be more liked by the ladies.
If you are healthy but worry about your joints because of exercises like squats and lunges, read our article on injury prevention.
Note
Do not do this program if you have knee or lower back injuries.
The program consists of 2 different lower body workouts, done every other day throughout the week, with Saturday and Sunday being rest days.
Monday – Thigh focus
Both workouts begin with a full body warm up starting from the ankles, knees, hip joints moving up to the lower back, shoulders and arms.
The warm up ends with some light form of cardio for 10 minutes with a moderate pace, like jogging or rope jumping.
The Exercises
Sumo squat
To further warm up the lower body musculature and start focusing on the thighs, we start the workout with body-weight wide-stance squats, which will engage the quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes, while the movement is stabilized by the calves
Execution
- Stand up straight with your feet placed wider than shoulder width
- Open up your toes so that they are pointing out
- Keep your hands extended in front of you
- Keep your back straight
- Squat down slowly
- Move up, contracting the quadriceps
Note
Knees can be carefully locked out at the top to achieve full muscle contraction.
Reverse lunge leg kick
Execution
- Stand up straight with your feet at shoulder width
- Place your hands on your hips and keep your back straight
- Step back and move down slowly, without letting your knee touch the ground
- Move back up and kick forward, extending your leg as much as possible
- Step back into the original position and proceed to the opposite leg
Regular lunge
Execution
- Stand up with your feet at shoulder width and place your hands on your hips
- While keeping your back straight and head looking forward, take a big step forward and go down slowly, without letting your knee touch the ground
- Move back up to the initial position and proceed to the opposite leg
Squatting stretch
The workout ends with a nice quad/hamstring stretching exercise.
Execution
- Stand up straight with your feet placed at shoulder width and toes pointing out
- While keeping your back straight, squat all the way down slowly, and stay in that position for 15 to 20 seconds
- Move up slowly, contract your quads and repeat 3 to 5 times
Wednesday – Glutes Focus
The Exercises
Body-weight squat
The workout begins with a regular bodyweight squat with an accent on glutes.
Execution
- Stand up with your feet at shoulder width and toes pointing out, keeping your back straight and arms extended in front of you
- Squat down until your legs are parallel to the ground
- Move up slowly, contracting the glutes at the top
Hip thrusts
Moving on to an isolated glutes exercise- Hip thrusts
Execution
- Lie down on a bench or a chair, on your upper back
- Step forward with your legs and bring them close together
- Let your hips hang in the air
- Thrust up, contracting the glutes and holding the contraction briefly
- Let your hips go down slowly and proceed to the next repetition
Kneeling bent leg kick back
Execution
- Kneel down and place your hands on the ground
- Keep your back straight and head looking forward
- Lift one of your legs up and bend it
- Kick back, contracting the glutes
- Let your leg down and proceed to the next few repetitions in a moderate pace
Lying glute stretch
The workout ends with a glute stretching exercise.
Execution
- Lie down on your back and place one of your legs on top of the other, so that the heel is at the lower portion of the quadriceps, right above the knee cap
- Grab the straightened leg by the hamstrings and pull it in, while the heel is on top
- Hold the stretch for up to 15 seconds and then release
- Proceed to the opposite side
Making the program furthermore effective can be achieved by reducing rest times in between sets and exercises, as well as adding sets and repetitions to all exercises.
Other tips
- You can use supersets or triple sets as methods to increase the density in the workout. This simply means doing two of the exercises consecutively with no rest in between the two exercises. This will save you time and will make your musculature work harder, doing more work in less time.
- Add low-intensity, moderate pace cardio at the end of each workout, such as jogging and rope jumping. This is for the sole purpose of getting in more blood in the legs to help you recover better.
- Add stretching at the very end of the workout, after the cardio phase.
- Calf training- Add at least 5 or more sets of 15 repetitions of calf raises on both days. To further emphasize on the calves, you can increase the pace on rope jumping and make it harder, by jumping on just one leg.
- If you have basic equipment like dumbbells and disks, you can use them for additional weight on the exercises during home workouts, once it is easy to do the exercises with body-weight.
