Warm Up Stretches for Leg Exercises

Series Summary

Many people want to lose weight, and despite claims for quick fat burning pills and powders, the best way to lose weight is still through proper diet and exercise. Exercise does more than just maintain physical fitness though. Working out can also help build healthy bone density, muscle strength, and joint mobility. It can also reduce your general health risks, boost the immune system, and help with depression and insomnia. Whether your reason for exercising is to lose weight, or improve muscle mass, working out is always a good idea to help promote the health of your body and mind.

While there are a number of exercises that can strengthen and shape your legs to give them more tone, some people don't have access to weight machines or the time to make it to the gym. In this free video series, a trainer and conditioning specialist will teach you a number of in-home leg exercises. Starting with stretches, you'll move on to chair and dumbbell squats, as well as a number of lunges. You'll also learn how to do dead lifts, wall sits, and calf raises. By following these training tips for working out the legs, you'll see results by the time you make it home!

Video Transcript

"Hello, I'm Kyle Brayer and this is Karie. Today we'll be doing the in-home leg workout. The most important part is your warm-up and stretch. For your warm-up you'll perform some jumping jacks, some moving squats, some running in place, or if you have a treadmill, putting it up at a slight incline and walking for about 5 minutes would be sufficient. For your stretching, Karie's going to step to the side. She'll just reach down very slowly and touch her toes, and then she's going to hold this for about 30 seconds. Her knees here, she's trying to lock them out. She's making sure that she's breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth. She's going to really feel this on her hamstrings. Okay, and go ahead and come up, Karie. Make sure you hold that stretch for 30 seconds. We're going to move into the quad stretch, so she's going to hold on here just to keep her balance and then she's going to pick up her left leg, grab it with her hand, and then she wants to keep her knees as close together as possible to get a good pull on her quadriceps, and this is the quad stretch. Again. Go ahead and release. We're going to hold all these stretches for about 30 seconds or longer. You want to control your breathing and ease into the stretch. You're not trying to pull connective tissue, you're just easing and trying to loosen up those muscles a little bit. The last stretch -yes, so she'll work the other side- the last stretch is Karie will actually sit down on her glutes and she's going to do a butterfly stretch where she's going to put her heels together, she's going to hold her toes and then lean into the stretch and try and bring her knees toward the ground. Again, controlling her breathing, breathing in through her nose, out through her mouth and holding the stretch for 30 seconds. That will conclude your warm-up and stretching. "