Top 20 Compound Leg Exercises for a Stronger Legs

When it comes to having stronger and more powerful legs, compound exercises are necessary. There is just not multiple muscle groups involved, but these exercises will work for you more efficiently. The compound leg exercises are the must in any fitness routine if you want to improve athletic performance, gain overall strength, or just toning and shaping up legs. In this blog we will discuss top 20 compound leg exercise, benefits of compound leg exercise and other best leg workouts, reasons to add them into your weekly workout.

A Particular Series of Compound Leg Exercises Are Very Important

Before we proceed to the specific compound leg exercises for building stronger legs, there’s much to know about the importance of these compound leg exercises….

1. Maximize Muscle Engagement

Also called compound exercises, they recruit multiple joints and muscle groups in unison, involving more of the body to fatigue and thus ensuring you build strength all round in a better way. While performing compound leg exercises, you are not just stimulating the leg muscles like the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and calves, but also you are strength training the core and stabilizer muscles.

2. Boost Metabolism

Burning calories and improving cardiovascular health can be achieved by these energy intensive exercises as they tend to raise your heart rate. If you do compound leg movements, working a larger muscle amount, it boosts the metabolic rate in the course of and after training.

3. Improve Functional Strength

Compound leg exercises are more functional than isolation as they mimic the movements like in real life whereas isolation exercises are only targeting specific areas individual. What this does mean though is the strength you obtain from leg compound exercises translates directly to our daily activities such as walking, climbing stairs, and running (just to name a few).

4. Increase Overall Power

The more muscles that are recruited in your exercise, the more strength and the more power you can create. Lastly, compound exercises allow you to massively load muscle, which does the same in increasing overall strength, and power, over time.

With that being said, we can now move onto the top 20 exercises that will assist you in creating stronger more powerful legs.

Top 20 Compound Leg Exercises

1. Squats

All leg exercises take a back seat to the king: Hack Squat Vs Leg Press, It fires the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes and core.

How to Perform:

• Stand with feet shoulder-width apart.
• Bend your hips down as if you were sitting down on a chair.
• Raise your chest and keep your knees behind your toes.

To come to the starting position, push through your heels.

2. Deadlifts

The deadlifts are great for building up the posterior chain, or hamstrings, glutes, lower back.

How to Perform:

• Lift the feet hip widths apart with the barbell before you.
• Grab the barbell by bending at the hips but keep your back straight.
• Raising the barbell up (while standing tall) with the barbell as close as possible to your body.

3. Lunges

Lunges are also an excellent exercise to improve the balance and strength of both legs.

How to Perform:

• Step in front with one leg and lower your hips for a 90-degree angle.
• Raise the front leg to push off and then return to starting position.
• Alternate legs.

4. Leg Press

The quadriceps, hamstrings and glutes are the targeted muscles of the leg press machine.

How to Perform:

• Sit on the leg press machine with the feet shoulder width apart.
• Lower the weight so that your knees reach a 90-degree angle then press the weight back up.

5. Bulgarian Split Squats

This exercise is unilateral and works the quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes.

How to Perform:

• Lie on a bench and place one foot behind you on the bench.
• Knee bend slightly forward at a 90 degrees with your hips.
• Squeeze your front heel, and press to return to the starting position.

6. Step-Ups

Leg and glute step ups are an easy but effective way to strengthen these tissues.

How to Perform:

• One foot must be stepped onto a bench or platform.
• Raise the other foot by pushing through your heel.
• Step down and repeat.

7. Romanian Deadlifts

Romanian Deadlifts are a variation of the traditional Deadlift which target the hamstrings and glutes.

How to Perform:

• Place a barbell in front of your feet, standing with feet hip width apart.
• Keep the hips hinged with a slight bend in the knees.

Lower the barbell to your hamstrings, or as low as you can without bending your knees, then go back.

8. Squat Jumps

Squat jumps integrate the advantage of squats with power training.

How to Perform:

• Perform squat and then jump explosively upward.
• Settle softly on the ground, and go directly into the next squat.

9. Walking Lunges

Effective exercise for strength and endurance in the legs is the walking lunge.

How to Perform:

• Lunge forward one step.
• Step forward into the next lunge pushing off the front foot.

10. Hip Thrusts

The glutes and hamstrings are the main targets of hip thrusts.

How to Perform:

Sit on the ground with a bench flanking you in the back.

• A barbell should be rolled over the hips and upper back on the bench.
• Squeeze your glutes at the top when you drive your hips upward.

The Benefits of Exercising for Stronger Legs

1. Increases Bone Density

Weight bearing exercises such as squats or lunges, among others, play an important role in increased bone density and protecting against osteoporosis.

2. Enhances Coordination and Balance

Because training the stabilizer muscles improves coordination and balance, leg exercises such as lunges, step ups, and Bulgarian split squats are very effective for both gymnasts and Olympians.

3. Promotes Better Posture

Improving posture has a lot to do with strengthening the legs, particularly the glutes and lower back. Having a strong core and legs will give you a better posture overall.

4. Supports Mental Health

Endorphins are chemicals in the brain that make you proud of yourself for beating todays to do list, they help increase your mood and reduce stress, and exercise releases endorphins. Toning and physical exercises, such as strength exercises, have been revealed to help with the management of anxiety and depression.

Exercise is important for leg strength for the following reasons.

Physical health is something that needs to be maintained and improved with exercise along with healthy high protein snacks​. It is especially important for leg strength which is important in order to maintain mobility and independence when we’re aging. Stronger legs will decrease the chance of falls and improve athletic performance as well as functional movement overall. Leg workouts also prevent injuries because it strengthens the muscles and ligaments that back the joint.

Exercise and Mental Health

In fact, it’s well established that regular physical activity confers many benefits to mental health. Stress, anxiety and symptoms of depression can be reduced by exercise. Other than that, one very good example is strength training and compound leg exercises like squats and deadlifts were observed to release endorphins (commonly referred to as ‘feel good’ hormones). Regular exercise also develops self-esteem and feeling of achievement which is a plus for mental wellbeing.

Benefits of Physical Activity

Apart from, regular physical activity has many advantages such as better cardiovascular health, increased muscle mass, better flexibility and a heightened sense of mental clarity. Then, leg exercises, in particular, help with bulking stronger muscles, keeping blood circulation in check, and boosting the mobility of joints. These long term health benefits can be enjoyed by those who lead an active life and conduct compound leg exercises.

Tips for Maximizing Leg Strength

1. Progressive Overload

As you do exercises, it’s important to increase weight or intensity of exercises slowly for muscle challenge and growth.

2. Consistency is Key

Leg exercises will be effective if performed as a regular part of your fitness routine. You should aim to hit your legs around 2 or 3 times per week.

3. Incorporate Variety

It is always good practice to include numerous compound leg exercises, as this will help hit the same muscles from different angles so as to keep your workouts fun and interesting.

FAQs About Leg Exercises

1. What is the frequency I should train my legs.

Do leg workouts twice if possible (at least twice) a week to have some recovery time and to continue to grow.

2. Which are the best strength leg exercises?

All excellent leg strength and squat building exercises are squats, deadlifts, lunges, and step ups.

3. Do leg exercises aid fat loss?

Leg exercises are intense and big muscle group exercises, so this can aid fat loss because of increase in metabolism.

4. What are tips to changing my squat form?

Make sure your feet are apart, knees over the toes and the spine in a neutral position. Bodyweight squats would be the first exercise to begin with, and you would progress to doing the exercise with an additional amount of weight once you master the form.

5. Here’s what you have to gain from Bulgarian split squats.

Bulgarian split squats are a great variation as they improve balance while building the legs and targeting the glutes, hamstrings and quadriceps.

6. Are leg lunges good for development of the legs through an intricate stretch?

Do lunges work so they are a great unilateral exercise for activating the quad, hamstrings and glutes.

7. What can I do to not have knee pain on leg exercises?

Try to train with proper form, do not overload the knees with too much weight and include mobility work to increase knee stability.

8. Can I do leg muscles without using any weights?

Definitely, certain bodyweight exercises such as lunges, squats and step ups are effective in building leg muscles for beginners.

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