Skipping leg day is a non negotiable, but sometimes an hours workout just isn’t doable, even 45 minutes can be a stretch. That’s where this high intensity resistance training (HIRT) workout comes in – it’s 30 minutes, will fire up your leg and glute muscles and burn lots of calories too. Just grab a pair of dumbbells and a small resistance band. Don’t have those? Your body weight and two big water bottles will do, or throw some books into a rucksack.
There's lots of great reasons to try HIIT, from burning calories to shedding body fat and building muscle, all in a short time period. Strength training works on boosting muscle and strength, therefore combining the two gives you the benefits of a strength and cardio workout in one. However, an additional benefit of HIRT workouts is that they're often lower impact, as resistance training is more gentle on the joints.
Louis' lower body workout
For this workout you've got three different stations to work through. Each circuit is made up of three exercises and you'll do each exercise for 40 seconds of work, followed by a 20 second rest. Once you've done one entire round of a circuit, take a 40 second rest, then repeat that circuit two more times before moving onto the next one. Here's your workout:
Circuit 1
Grab your dumbbells for this circuit, two water bottles, or use your bodyweight.
- Dumbbell squat with a pulse
- Dumbbell side lunge to the left
- Dumbbell side lunge to the right
Circuit 2
Grab your resistance band and place it around your knees or just use your bodyweight
- Two squats followed by two side steps to the right (then the left)
- Glute kickbacks on all fours (right side)
- Glute kickbacks on all fours (left side)
Circuit 3
- Reverse lunge with a knee drive (right side)
- Reverse lunge with a knee drive (left side)
- Three high knees and hold (if high knees is too hard, replace it with a light jog on the spot)
We hope you enjoyed that! Make sure you put aside 10 minutes to do some stretches while your muscles are still warm and to prevent any aches the following day. We've got plenty of other leg workouts here on T3 - like this five move bodyweight workout or this four-move dumbbell workout, ideal for doing at the gym or at home.
