If you’re short on both time and kit, you may be tempted to skip leg day altogether. But the truth is, you don’t necessarily need hours on end and a state-of-the-art gym in order to pump up your quads, hamstrings and glutes.
This quick-fire workout mashes up a pair of dumbbells and two of the biggest hitting leg movements to ensure you hit your lower body from front to back in the most efficient way possible.
How long will it take? Well, that parts up to you. Hit it hard, and you’ll be walking out of the gym in less than 20 minutes. But when we say hard, we mean hard, so it may be more of a limp out of the gym.
You’re going to be using a ladder format, switching back and forth from left to right, reducing the reps as you go. You should only rest as you need to in order to keep your form sharp, but push yourself hard on this one if you want to get it ticked off in a timely manner.
You’ll begin with 10 reps of dumbbell front squats, hitting your quads, before lowering your bells and performing 10 Romanian deadlifts, lighting up those hamstrings and glutes. After a (very) brief breather, you’ll clean your dumbbells back up onto your shoulders and perform nine squats, followed by nine deadlifts. Next, eight of each, then seven of each. Keep working your way down the ladder one rep at a time. As the reps reduce, see if you can go straight through without dropping your 'bells.
That’s 110 reps in the legs, by the way. And trust us, you’ll know it.
1. Front Squat x 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Clean a pair of dumbbells onto the front of your shoulders (A). From here, drop into a deep squat, until the crease of your hips passes below your knees. Pause here (B), before driving back up. Take a deep breath at the top of each rep, helping to brace your core. Keep your torso upright throughout.
2. Romanian Deadlift x 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
Drop your dumbbells down to your sides (A). With a slight bend in the knees, push your hips back and slowly lower the 'bells towards the ground (B), pinching your shoulders back and maintaining a flat back. When you feel a deep stretch in your hamstrings, pause and explosively return to an upright position Repeat.
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.
