Legs
70 pieces
- Exercise2 September 2026Wall sitBack against a wall, slide down until your thighs are level, hold. Nothing moves, which makes it the easiest hard thing in the library to set up: no kit, no space, no skill. It is also the exercise that ranked highest for the top blood pressure number in a large analysis of isometric training trials[1].
- Exercise2 September 2026Walking lungeStep forward, drop the back knee, stand up onto the front leg, then walk into the next one. Every rep is a controlled landing on one leg, which is why this feels harder than the same weight held still and why a side that is weaker cannot borrow from the other.
- Exercise2 September 2026Vest step-upA step-up in a weighted vest. Nothing in your hands, which means no dumbbells to swing and nothing to grip, so the only thing that fails is the leg on the box. That is the point of loading a step-up this way.
- Exercise2 September 2026Vest squatA bodyweight squat with a weighted vest on. The load sits close to your trunk and stays there, so nothing about the movement changes except that it is heavier. That is the appeal: it is the cheapest way to keep a squat progressing when you have no rack.
- Exercise2 September 2026Vest reverse lungeA reverse lunge with a weighted vest on. The load sits on your trunk rather than in your hands, which leaves your arms free to balance and keeps the weight from swinging. For a single leg movement, where balance is usually what fails first, that is a real advantage.
- Exercise2 September 2026Trap bar deadliftYou stand inside this bar instead of behind it, which puts the load in line with you rather than out in front. It is the deadlift most people learn fastest and the one they load quickest, and it is a hinge for all that it feels like a squat.
- Exercise2 September 2026Sumo deadliftA wide stance with the hands inside the knees. The bar travels a shorter distance than it does on a conventional pull and more of the work goes to the quads and to holding your hips open, which makes it a different lift rather than an easier one.
- Exercise2 September 2026Standing calf raiseStand with the balls of your feet on a step, sink into a stretch, then press up onto your toes. Your knees are straight, which puts the two headed calf muscle at full length, and that turns out to be the difference between this and the seated version.
- Exercise2 September 2026Smith machine squatA squat on a bar locked into a vertical track. The machine holds the bar's path so you do not have to, which removes the balance problem and changes where your feet have to go. It is a real leg exercise with a real cost, and the cost is worth knowing before you choose it.
- Exercise2 September 2026Sliding leg curlLie on your back with your heels on something that slides, lift your hips, then push the heels out and drag them back in. No machine, no weight. Your hamstrings are holding your hips up and bending your knees at the same time, which is why it gets hard so quickly.
- Exercise2 September 2026Sled pushLoad a sled and push it. There is no lowering phase at all: you press the whole way and then stop, which is unusual enough to change what the exercise costs you afterwards. It is recorded here in time rather than in repetitions, because a push is a distance rather than a count.
- Exercise2 September 2026Sit-to-stand squatSit down onto a seat, stand back up. The seat sets the depth and gives you somewhere to stop, which makes this the squat you can do when a full one is not available yet. It is also the movement human independence is measured by, which is worth knowing before you dismiss it.
- Exercise2 September 2026Single-leg Romanian deadliftStand on one leg and hinge, letting the free leg travel back behind you as a counterweight. Balance is the obvious difficulty and it is not the point. The point is that one hip has to resist rotating open, which no two legged hinge asks of you.
- Exercise2 September 2026Single-leg glute bridgeThe glute bridge on one leg, which roughly doubles what the working side has to lift and adds a job that was not there before: keeping your hips level while it does. It needs a floor, and it is where most people find out one side has been carrying the other.
- Exercise2 September 2026Single-leg calf raiseA calf raise on one foot. It roughly doubles what that calf is lifting without any weight at all, which makes it the obvious next step when two legged raises stop being hard. It also stops a stronger side quietly carrying the weaker one.
- Exercise2 September 2026Side-lying hip abductionLie on your side and lift the top leg. It looks like a warm-up and it is not: measured against eleven other exercises, this one produced the most gluteus medius activity of the lot, and by a wide margin[1].
- Exercise2 September 2026Shin-height step-upA step-up onto something low. The height is the whole specification: no higher than mid shin, which keeps the rep inside a range almost anybody can control and stops it turning into a lunge at a step. It is where a step-up starts, not a lesser version of one.
- Exercise2 September 2026Seated leg curlSit down, curl your heels back under the pad. Sitting up puts your hips bent and your hamstrings already long before the rep starts, which sounds like a detail and is the single best documented reason to prefer one leg curl over another.
- Exercise2 September 2026Seated calf raiseSit with the pads across your thighs and press up onto your toes. Bending the knee shortens the big two headed calf muscle and takes it largely out of the movement, which leaves the soleus underneath it doing the work. That is the whole reason this machine exists.
- Exercise2 September 2026Romanian deadliftStand up with the bar, push the hips back, let the bar travel down your legs until the hamstrings tell you to stop. It is a hinge and not a squat: the knees stay softly bent throughout and barely change angle, so the whole movement happens at the hip.
Show moreShowing 20 of 70
Can’t find it? Suggest a topic