Hamstring

Man performs an RDL with perfect form and depth.

The hamstring is a very important part of your lower body. It helps stabilize your knees and your hips and they’re huge contributors in your movement and range of motion. A strong hamstring is very important whether you’re in sports or like to lift. This muscle is very important in everyones bodies. To strengthen the hamstring try doing some of these workouts: Straight Leg Deadlift, Hamstring Curls with resistance bands, Air Squats, Pistol Squats, Single arm Kettlebell Swings, RDL’s or Romanian Deadlift, Glute Ham Raises, and the Cardio Row. Strengthening the hamstring will help you in a lot of areas. It will help you run faster, improve explosiveness, improve posture, and prevent future leg injury’s from occurring. Lastly it’s also important to stretch the hamstrings before and at the end of the workouts, because stretching them will prevent them from the risk of strain and future injury.

Calves

A woman jumping rope strengthening her calves.

The Calf muscle is often forgotten because of how small it is. In reality the calf muscles propel us forward with every step and are two of the most used muscles in our body. We use the calves everyday often without knowing. Some reasons to increase your strength in your calves are you will become faster, you will develop a more consistent pace, you will be able to jump higher, and you will be able to run longer. Some exercises to help with this are Straight & Bent Knee Calf Raises, Seated Calf Raises, Box Jumps, Jump Rope, Dumbbell Jump Squats, and Farmers Walks on your Toes. My personal Favorite is the Jump Rope because it builds muscles strength and stamina in the legs and calves. It’s strengthening muscles while incorporating some cardio into your workout.

Thighs

Man does weighted Split Squats to help improve Quadricep strength.

The thigh muscles are a large part of the lower part of our bodies. Every one wants to have strong legs and most guys live to have toned and defined thighs. This is something that is relatively easy to attain with a good work ethic and consistency. The thigh muscle or quadricep muscle is a key muscles when lifting lower body lifts like deadlift and especially squat but also they help with power and explosiveness like when starting off a sprint or riding a bike for long periods of time. Box Jumps, Bulgarian Split Squat, Barbell Front Squat, Goblet Squat, Weighted or Unweighted Box Squats, Wall Sits, and Walking Lunges are all huge lifts that will help increase muscle strength and growth. Incorporating these workouts into your weekly workout plan will increase the strength in your thighs as well as your overall lower body strength.

Buttocks

The glutes/buttocks muscles are the most important muscles in the lower body. Your overall power, strength and speed all come from the buttocks muscles. This is why they are so helpful to train when you are playing virtually any sport. The buttocks muscles are the biggest muscles used in your lifts like Squat, Deadlift, Box Jumps, and Kettlebell Swings. Some lifts to help strengthen these muscles so you can improve on your other lifts and increase your power and speed output are: The basic Squat, Leg Press, Single Leg Deadlift, Pistol Squats, Bulgarian Split Squat, and Step Ups. These auxiliary work outs will strengthen your buttocks so you can increase in strength, speed, power, and mobility.

“honing strength and activating your glutes should be a top priority in all exercise programs,”

~Robert Reames, C.S.C.S.

Hips

How the kettlebell swing will look when done correctly.

The hips are part of the body some of us might not think about when it comes to lifting. Most really don’t tent to notice them unless their causing an issue for them. That’s why you have to make sure and keep a good hip strengthening exercise incorporated into your regime. Strengthening the hip area will help increase your mobility and flexibility and will also make you fell better when lifting weights like squats and deadlift. Some exercises to help strengthen the hips are Bulgarian Split Squats, Step Up Reverse Lunges, Banded Jump Squats, Kettlebell Swings, and Lateral Lunges. My personal favorite is the Kettlebell swing, because it’s a easy lift to do no matter where you are and it really works the hips fast. This lift is preformed by taking a kettlebell and holding it with both hands resting at your waist. You will then squat down so it’s resting between your legs and explode up out of it bringing the kettlebell swinging out in front of you usually around eye level. Then carefully letting it down/swing back down to the bottom and you dropping back down into a squat right before exploding back up into another repetition.