Looking for a new leg exercise? Celebrity trainer Louisa Drake gives us an insight into how she trains for the stars with her intense 5-minute leg workout. If you’ve been hoping to join the quad team with an at-home quad workout, now’s your chance! Drake has trained the likes of Victoria Beckham and Gwyneth Paltrow, and now you can use one of her exercises to stretch and strengthen your leg muscles.
This leg workout was posted to the Harpers Bazaar YouTube channel and only takes 5 hot minutes to complete. But don’t be fooled. While it only includes three leg exercises—squats, lunges, and hip extensions—Drake gives these core functional exercises a fiery facelift by adding Pilates-inspired pulsations and ballet principles to get your legs rocking.
If Pilates is your bag, give it a try Pilates workout for your abs and gluteal muscles. And for even more bodyweight workout inspiration, this gymnastics workout uses just four exercises to build total body strength. Find out what happened when you tried PT Louisa Drake’s 5-Minute Leg Workout.
Watch Celeb PT Louisa Drake’s 5-Minute Leg Workout
While searching for a quick at-home quad workout that will challenge me just like the local gym, I stumbled upon celebrity PT Louisa Drake and her 5-Minute Leg Workout. Let’s be real: I’m going to get more monsters out of lifting heavy kettlebells, deadlifts, or some of the best adjustable dumbbells to achieve my goals of building stronger leg muscles, right?
Not so fast. Gymnastic exercises (body weight training) have been shown to lead to significant improvements in strength when compared to weight training – as shown in this study published by Journal of Strength and Conditioning (Opens in a new tab) — and it’s not impossible to build muscle mass either (but much harder, admittedly).
and published research Journal of Experimental Orthopedics (Opens in a new tab) It was found that knee extensions performed using resistance bands showed higher quadriceps muscle activity than when using a machine. Similarly, single-leg squats and sit-ups elicited higher peak quadruple activity than the machine leg press.
Science aside, if you’re short on weights and time, these 3 bodyweight quad exercises can provide a powerful and effective home workout in just a few minutes. Drake uses time smartly, so instead of focusing on reps, sets, and rest, she makes you work out for a full five minutes.
I tried celebrity PT Louisa Drake’s 5-Minute Leg Workout—and it blows my mind
I’m used to lifting weights, so my ballet- and Pilates-inspired classes are always brutally humbling, and I always left the house hobbling my jelly legs afterwards (luckily, I did this in my apartment). But it makes sense because ballet dancers and Pilates practitioners are some of the fittest people in the world, and they were built from the ground up packing a strong core, great posture, and solid strength.
This short bodyweight workout won’t appeal to everyone, so if you don’t cut five minutes into it, Chris Hemsworth’s 200 rep bodyweight workout is a weightless killer. If you are an act Stick to Drake’s leg workout, one round is killer enough for beginners, and two will burn your legs.
Avoid fully extending your legs during the squat and lunge, as sitting with your hips down and bending your knees will tone your quadriceps, and your back knee should gently tap the floor at the bottom of the lunge. Likewise, during lunges, maintain a slight bend in your back knee as you drive through your front heel to achieve that painful, crunching sensation through your quads without fully standing up.
After all that pulse, the “arabesque” leg lifts (hip extensions) are great refinement. However, your glutes can often do a full lower-body workout without a full switch, so remember to give them a good squeeze on top of your squats and lunges and keep your core tight the entire time. ortry the best glute exercises next.
If you’re looking for more leg day inspiration, here’s what happened when I tried the 7-move kettlebell leg workout to build bigger legs, and find out how our fitness writer got when he tried 50 sumo squats every day for a week.
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