Who doesn’t love leg days? Even if you’re not a big fan, a lower body workout means you’re faster on your feet and less likely to experience aches and pains. This helps you get through runs, workouts, or even daily walks while feeling and looking better all the way around. 

Let’s be honest: Creating an effective workout routine to strengthen your lower body involves more than just leg day. No matter your goals, the variety of moves you can build into your exercises remains endless. You’ll find many fun and effective workouts for your specific goals as you learn how your muscles work and why you need to train them. Multi Color Rubber Band

You can also build muscle with resistance bands, which work in a similar way to free weights. They give your muscles resistance to work against, and you’ll grow stronger as a result. Here’s how it works, along with some of our favorite resistance bands workouts.

The lower body begins at the hip and goes all the way to your toes. This includes the hip bone, knee, and ankle joints. It also involves major muscle groups like the glutes, quads, hamstrings, adductors, and calves.

Lower body workouts engage many large muscle groups that improve your overall fitness level, athletic performance, and healthy movement patterns. Other benefits include: 

Believe it or not, the benefits don’t even end there. Lower body workouts can also help with:

Here’s what to consider when looking for the best resistance bands  for your lower body workouts. 

Look for bands with different strength or tension levels. If you’re just starting, choose a band with less strength or tension. These are often yellow, while black bands have more strength and tension, but be sure to confirm depending on the manufacturer. Choose between three to five resistance levels because your needs will change as you get stronger. 

If you can, try the bands out before you buy them. Make sure they don’t snap or get stuck while you’re using them. Generally speaking, thicker bands last longer. Check them out before each workout after you buy them, too. If you see breaks or damages, don’t use them. Those snaps can hurt! It’s basically like getting smacked with a giant rubber band. No fun. 

You can buy elastic, fabric, or rubber latex resistance bands. Fabric brands can be more comfortable and last longer. They also don’t roll up or move around while working out. This can be great for lower body exercises. On the plus side, latex resistance bands stretch more, which is also helpful for upper body exercises and stretching.

Squats are a convenient and inexpensive way to build muscles and increase strength. Good resistance bands add some challenges to make squats  even more effective .

Deadlifting is one of the best full-body exercises because it adds mass to your frame while increasing strength.  

Experiment with a few bands to find the best tension for you when you begin these resistance-band glute bridges or any lower body workout with resistance bands. Alternatively, you can start with a medium band and then go lighter or harder as needed.

Simple exercises like fire hydrants can be an at-home lower body workout, but you can do them anywhere. This is especially helpful if you’re on the road and can’t get to a gym. A resistance band will also increase the intensity.

Strong calves will positively affect running, cycling, and any team or individual sport. You will also become more stable and, therefore, stronger when doing squats and deadlifts.

This might feel funny, but it’s a great way to stabilize and strengthen your hips!

If you need guidance on how to incorporate the exercises mentioned above into a full workout, give the example workout below a try!

Magnesium is more than a fun-to-say word that sounds like something a super hero gets their power from. It's a vital mineral that can offer a big assist to your mood, quality of sleep, heart, and more. But how do we take in more of the stuff, aside from going the supplement route?

Foods high in magnesium, of course, and tasty, snack-able ones that that. Fortunately, you've got options in this department, so adjust your grocery shopping list accordingly. And you should, because the mineral helps with protein synthesis, keeping your blood pressure in check, and helping your muscles work better. Magnesium also keeps bones and teeth healthy, one more reason to load up.

When the pandemic hit in 2020 and gyms everywhere closed, home workout solutions became an overnight necessity. This boom led to shortages in dumbbells, kettlebells, and other home gym equipment, and as a result, the price of workout iron skyrocketed. Accordingly, many fitness enthusiasts began looking for alternatives. For many, workout sandbags provided the solution.

Even before all of this, sandbags were growing in popularity among the fitness community thanks to their ability to deliver an extremely diverse, effective weight training session. By increasing or decreasing the amount of sand, you can enjoy widely varying loads, and the best workout sandbags come equipped with handles and other features in all the right places, lending themselves to a slew of different movements and lifts.

If your New Year’s resolution to lose weight is stalling, consider your gut health. Last month if you logged onto the r/nutrition subreddit, the buzzy word “gut microbiome” came up.

“There is an increasing body of research concluding that gut microbiome strongly [affects] a lot of aspects of our bodies – composition, weight, mood, mental clarity, etc.,” posted u/Dr.Melbourne.

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