Glute-Focused Leg Workout: NO MACHINES!

STRETCHING:

I like to spend a solid 5-10 minutes stretching before every workout. I stretch my whole body everyday, but it's typically more focused on the muscle group that I'm working. I do this to prevent injury, stretch out my hamstrings and hips before working those muscles in my lifts, and get into the right headspace for working out. I also try to roll out my legs and upper back if I have a chance.

GLUTE ACTIVATION/ WARM UP:

As a student, I spend the majority if my day sitting in a desk completing work. As a result, it can be incredibly difficult to feel a mind-muscle connection for my glutes during my workouts. I like walking side to side with a slight bend in my knees while wearing a resistance band above my knees for about 30 seconds to a minute, or before I begin to feel my glutes "wake up". Then, I will to kick backs with the same resistance band, continuing until I feel a burn. 

After I have established that mind muscle connection, I will do a set of squats with the resistance band to practice hitting depth and using proper technique before I use any weight. 

It might seem a little weird that I spend so much time warming up, but it is the best way for me to prevent injury. My body does best with a thorough warm-up, but everyone's body works differently. If I am crunched for time, I will condense this but I will never skip this step in my workout routine.

POWERLIFTING MOVEMENTS:

Here is where I start to do my powerlifting movements; either a squat or a deadlift to start my leg workout. In this particular workout I will be squatting, but I also practice conventional and sumo style deadlifts. 

Again, my body does best with a lot of warming up so I will do a few warm up sets to work up to my working set. If I programmed 4x4 squats with 75 lbs, then I would do one set with 4 reps and the bar, the next I'd move up to 60 lbs, and then go into my working set. This also lets me decide whether I should stick with a lower weight for that session. 

After each set, I try to take 1-2 minutes rest to fully let my body recover from the weight. Once I'm finished with all of my sets, I move onto my hypertrophy training.

HYPERTROPHY TRAINING:

After practicing my powerlifting, I will do some hypertrophy in order to build muscle and focus on my goals for my appearance. I will normally move on to a superset of barbell hip thrusts and Romanian deadlifts, doing approximately 3 sets of 10-12. I'll move onto single leg Romanian deadlifts and step ups, both as body weight movements and 3 sets of 10 since I haven't completely mastered them. Lastly, I will burn out my glutes and hamstrings with a superset of hamstring curls on a medicine ball with frog pumps for 2 sets of 20. 

HIGH INTENSITY INTERVAL TRAINING (HIIT):

If I have time, I like to throw some HIIT onto the end of my workouts. I'm currently loving using the bike as a mode of HIIT. I know I said no machines, but you could definitely do this with a normal bike or apply this to any other form of cardio. I normally get bored trying to do cardio, so I started doing it with music. When the song is at the chorus, I stand up on the bike and pedal for as long as the chorus continues. When the verses are playing, I sit on the bike and rest. This allows for me to get an easy bike workout in, kind of like my own personal SoulCycle. I'll do this for an average of 10 minutes, or 2 miles. Then, I'll stay on the bike at a slower pace to cool down. 

I hope you guys enjoyed this leg workout! Let me know if you try it and if you want more content like this!

Morgan