Quick at home Circuit for the Lower Body

Winter is well and truly here and it doesn’t look like it is going anywhere any time soon.  While the sun is still shining in some places, one thing has remained the same – the sudden cold snap forcing us to realise that winter is definitely here and we need to start rugging up in our warm clothes. 

With the cold weather it is human nature to want to stay in bed where it is nice and warm just that little bit longer in the morning or to crawl in to bed as soon as you come home from work and give exercise the flick. After all who is going to see your body under all the layers anyway? 😉 

I thought I would put together a quick at home circuit for the lower body (and next week I will post one for the upper body) that you can do from the comfort of your own warm home, for those times when you just don’t want to leave the house to make it to the gym or to head out for a nice long run or walk. 

Why wait for summer to come around before you start to freak out about ‘letting yourself go’ over winter? (By the way, please don’t ever freak about that!) You can do all of the exercises without any equipment, other than a chair or bench for the step ups, so what are you waiting for?

Perform each exercise 15 times (each side for single leg exercises) (for the wall sit, hold for 30 seconds – work your way up to this if you need to), before moving on to the next exercise, take a 1 minute water break after each circuit (take 2-3 minutes if you are struggling) and complete the full circuit three times – it should take you approximately 20-25 minutes depending on how long you take for water breaks. 

Begin with a 30 second Wall Sit (as the name suggests, lower yourself into a position where your knees are at a 90 degree angle and your back is against a wall, like you are sitting down). 

Next move into Body Weight Squats, perform 15 squats, take two seconds to go down and two seconds to come back up. 

Alternating Lunges – we need 15 per leg for this exercise, similar to the squats take this nice and slow, start feet about hip width apart and then step forward and lunge down with the first leg, step back to starting and perform the same on the opposite leg. 

Glute Bridges are tough work on the glutes, take them nice and slow and squeeze the glutes as you perform them. Keep your hips up and as straight as possible through the movement. 

Step Ups – a relatively simple exercise which can tire you quite easily. Simply step up on to a step (or chair) with one leg baring most of your weight then bring your other leg up, once both are up step down slowly and perform on the other leg – you will need to do 15 each leg for this exercise. Don’t worry about the weights in this exercise unless your feeling like it’s too easy then grab a couple of water bottles. 

Calf Raises – find yourself a small step or ledge (can be done without the step if you don’t have one), bring yourself up on to the balls of your toes, hold for a second and then slowly go back down. 

Let me know what you think if you give it a go and look out for next weeks upper body circuit 🙂