Training your upper body from home is a breeze, at least logistically. You can push, pull, curl and even row relatively light dumbbells and see some pretty good returns on those reps. But training your lower body can feel like an altogether different animal— with heavy squats and deadlifts off the menu for a lot of us, and endless rows of quad burning machines an even more distant dream, the idea of building bigger pins from the (dis)comfort of your own garage can seem like a non-starter.
The answer? Turn up the volume. Literally. What you lack in weight you can make up for in reps, and this 300 rep dumbbell leg burner has those in abundance.
Grab the heaviest bells you can muster and work your weight through our lunge and squat ‘chipper’— chipping away at the reps, resting only as necessary to keep your form on point, but keeping that intensity sky high.
Keep track of how many total sets it takes you to perform each movement. Once you can complete a movement in 5 sets of 20 reps, taking only short breaks, it’s time for some bigger ‘bells.
The Workout
1/ Alternating reverse lunge x100
Stand tall (A). Keeping your chest up at all times, take a step backward with one leg, bending your front knee until the back knee touches the ground (B). Stand up explosively, pause and repeat with the other leg (each leg equals one rep)
2/ Alternating forward lunge x100
Keep your dumbbells in hand and your torso upright (A). This time take a step forward with one leg, bending the at the knee until the back knee touches the ground (B). Stand up explosively, pause and repeat with the other leg.
3/ Goblet squat x100
Drop one of your dumbbells and hold the remaining bell close to your chest (A). Sink your hips back and descend into a squat (B). Your elbows should come in between your knees at the bottom. Drive back up, tensing your glutes at the top. Repeat. Push yourself through these, you can probably do more than you think.
With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.
As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.
Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.
You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.
