Lower leg muscles | Strength training exercises

Lower leg muscles

Sitting” calf lifting primarily trains the calves and also strengthens the ankles. Here, too, you are in a machine, this time sitting. There is a 90° angle in the hip and knee joints, the upper body is upright and the arms grasp the two handles on the machine.

The feet are on a board and on the knees there is a bar connected to the weight. By pushing up the ankles, the knees lift the weight and the bar moves towards the abdomen. Then the weight is lowered again and the bar is pushed back over the knees.

If I want to do a strength training at home, I usually don’t have machines, gymnastic balls and dumbbell bars available.However, adequate strength training can also be carried out without these aids. “Push-ups” are a classic of exercises for at home. They can be made more difficult or even simplified by many variations.

You can put your legs on a raised platform like a chair to increase the difficulty. Or you can get down on your knees to make the exercise easier. Another well-known exercise is the “sit-ups”, which can also be varied in many ways.

The legs can stand on the floor or be held in the air at an angle. They can be crossed or a heavy object can be held in front of the chest to increase the intensity. “Forearm support” and “Side support” are excellent exercises for the trunk muscles (abdomen and back) and can be exercised on a blanket on the floor in any apartment.

For the back, you can also use the “Scale”, where you lie on the floor with your stomach and lift your arms/head and legs. The torso and buttocks remain on the floor. Variations are the incorporation of arm and/or leg movements during the tense phase.

Even the thigh and calf muscles can be trained from home without the use of equipment. The “wall sitting” is a good exercise for the thigh muscles. You should pay close attention to the joint angles, which should always be 90° for this exercise.

For the calf muscles, “toe standing” is a good exercise, in which you stand against a wall and alternately walk on your tiptoes and down again on the entire foot. “Lungeing steps” round off the exercises and are highly recommended for the thigh and buttock muscles. In addition, you can improvise a lot of equipment with household aids. Dumbbells can be replaced, for example, by milk packs or water bottles, so that biceps and triceps exercises can also be performed at home.