Alachua Personal Trainer Reveals the Best Lower Body Exercise Ever

Jan. 4, 2011 - PRLog -- As a fitness trainer, I get a lot of questions regarding "What exercises are best for ______" fill in the blank. One of the most common areas of concerns is the lower body, specifically the butt and thighs. Today I'm going to share my personal favorite lower body exercise. It's called the Rear-Foot Elevated Lunge (a.k.a. Bulgarian Split Squat). This exercise is so effective that you'll pretty much make your body thunder-thigh proof once you master it.

My favorite leg exercises are any sort of lunge variation because I prefer single-leg exercises in lieu of their double leg counterparts for a lot of reasons. For people with back issues, single leg exercises allow them to safely perform lower body exercises without putting their lower lumbar spine in jeopardy of hyper flexion or excessive rounding that can cause back spasms in the short run and herniated discs in the long run. Furthermore, I feel there's often such a strength and/or flexibility imbalance between one leg and the other for most people that it's critical to address one leg at a time to really shore up the weak links from the start.

My favorite lunge variation is called the rear-foot elevated lunge. To perform this exercise, we're going to elevate the back foot on a chair, bench, box, or any other sturdy foot support, usually about 12-18 inches high. You'll put your front leg well in front of you in order to make sure that your front knee and ankle are lined up. In general, I tell people to exaggerate how far you put your front leg forward so that the front knee is almost slightly behind the ankle as this really helps reduce sheer force on the knees. Initiate the exercise by loading the front heel and dropping your hips as low as you can in a pain-free range of motion while staying really tall up top with a proud chest and shoulders down and back. Finish the rep by explosively driving through your front heel to return to the top of the movement.

You can start with body-weight only in search of front thigh parallel to the floor or lower depth and then progress by adding speed of movement or by adding a kettlebell or dumbbells. You can even incorporate some very cool combination movements with this lower body exercise like adding a curl-to-press at the top of the movement or even by raising dumbbells overhead to really challenge your core and single-leg balance and stability.

I have yet to find an exercise that hits the legs as hard as this exercise does. In particular, it really helps strengthen your vastus medialis muscle (VMO), that inner quad muscle that looks like a teardrop, that's heavily responsible for tracking your patella and keeping your knee caps in line. If you have a history of overtraining or patella-femoral issues (knee pain or tracking issues), this exercise is phenomenal for keeping your knees as bulletproof as possible.

Also, what's great about this exercise is that it provides a very good stretch for the hip flexor of your back leg, an area that is often very tight, especially for people who sit most of the day at work (which is 90 percent of us). Any exercise that allows you to simultaneously stretch and strengthen your body is a real keeper. Don't waste another moment with the useless adductor machine (a.k.a. the "inner-outtie" machine) and get off your butt and crank it with the world's best lower body exercise today.

Nathan Trenteseaux, YFS1, USC1, YNS is a local Alachua small group fitness instructor and real-world fat loss expert. To book him to speak at your local Alachua company, club, or organization please contact him by email at nate@UndergroundFitnessRevolution.com or by phone at 352.682.3310. For more information, please visit www.UndergroundFitnessRevolution.com.

# # #

Underground Fitness Revolution specializes in 30-minute EXPRESS metabolic workouts for busy men and women designed to get you in the best shape of your life regardless of your current fitness level.