Your legs and glutes are the powerhouse muscle groups in your body, and spending 30 minutes working them with this session is a great way to fire up your metabolism as well as strengthening your whole lower body.
You’ll also strengthen your core with the workout, which is perfect for runners and anyone who plays sports in general because of the way it builds functional strength in the lower body.
The workout has been created by Anna Engelschall (best known as growingannanas on YouTube), and all you need to do it is a set of dumbbells and a chair or bench to rest your foot on during Bulgarian split squats.
Engelschall is using two 11-pound dumbbells for the workout, which might seem quite light for a legs and glutes session, but you’ll be doing long sets of each move with only short rests in between, so it’s best to err on the side of caution when picking your weight. If you have a set of the best adjustable dumbbells you can quickly change the weight if a move is proving too hard or too easy.
Watch Anna Engelschall’s 30-minute legs and glutes workout
You go straight into the workout when the video starts, with some bodyweight sumo squats serving as the warm up for the exercises with weights, so be ready to go as soon as you hit play.
The main section of the workout involves doing each move for 40 seconds and then resting for 10 seconds. That’s not a lot of rest and you’ll need to change position between moves, so keep an eye on the top left corner of the screen to see what’s coming up next.
After doing 24 moves you move into a challenging five-minute block where you just do Bulgarian split squats, alternating legs and working for 40 seconds, resting for 10 seconds. The workout is then finished off by a five-minute section doing a lot of clamshell exercises with no rest at all, to really ramp up the burn in your glutes.
After the workout Engelschall leads you through a quick cool down to stretch the legs and glutes, which is wll worth doing in the hope it might reduce your lower body DOMS in the days following the session.
This is a long workout but it is one that’s suitable for all fitness levels. If you’re more of a beginner you can also change the structure to work for 30 seconds and rest for 20 seconds, or drop your dumbbells (carefully) midway through a set if the exercise is proving too hard with them.
If you’d like to try a shorter session, this 20-minute dumbbell workout is great for your legs and glutes, or if you don’t have dumbbells you could try this 40-minute lower-body workout that just uses bodyweight exercises.