Exercises To Do at Home When You Are Busy With a New Baby- Lower Body

at 12:56 PM

I told you in my last post that I would show you some lower body exercises.  Almost all of these exercises are compound exercises involving two or more muscle groups.  You can do high repetition versions of these exercises or if you have some light dumbbells around you can turn them into lower rep, muscle burning workouts.  If I had to choose, my all-time lower body move would be the lunge.  It is easy to do and you can do it statically (in place) or dynamically (moving forward).  The lunge workouts your glutes, hamstrings, quadriceps and calves.  And if you do it fast enough and long enough it will turn into a cardio exercise itself.  If you don't believe me, start by doing a 5 minute lunge with no rest and see for yourself how your heart rate will go up.

The lunge-

The Lunge

The squat- You can do this exercise either with your feet close together, which will then put most of the work load on the glutes or with you feet apart in which case you will work out mostly your quadriceps.  Both are shown below.  Remember to always have your back straight.  And when you start out do as many as you can with no weight, then take a few seconds of rest and continue.  These body weight exercises work best with high repetition.







The squat with feet close together



The Squat with feet wide apart



These exercises need no special equipment and you can easily do them at home.  In fact when I don't have time to go to the gym.  I do my cardio on my spin bike at home then I set up a circuit inside the house with all the lower and upper body exercises I posted on the last blog.  I do each station for about 1 min, for a total of 45 minutes.  A fantastic workout!!