Legs's workout: Which exercises should I choose?

There are many exercises that we can perform to exercise lower limbs, but not all of them have the same effect in our muscles. Also it's important to know the way of doing correctly the exercises we are going to do.

In this post I'm going to show which exercises should we choose to workout our quadriceps, hamstrings and gluteus.

Ebeen y cols. (2010) made a research about this. They tried to find out the best exercise for each muscular group. Then they proposed four exercises that have to be performed by sixteen women, that exercises were:

1. Barbell squat (1)
2. Dead lift (2)
3. Rise to the stage (3)
4. Squat lunge (4)

Barbell squat

Dead lift

Rise to the stage

Squat lunge

The results were:

1. Exercises 3 and 4 were better for working out gluteus medius, gluteus maximus and vastus medialis (internal).
2. Exercise 1 for working out rectus femoris.
3. Exercises 1, 3 and 4 for working out vastus lateralis (external).
4. Exercise 2 it's the best for working out hamstrings.

It's important to know that the the review doesn't specify how to do the exercises, the intensity and the speed.

We will continue writing about the correct way of performing this exercises.

For any question, don't hesitate asking us. We will be glad to help you out with any doubt you have.

Thanks for reading.

Ebben, W.P. (2009). Hamstring activation during lower body resistance training exercises. 
International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance, 4(1), 84-87.

Ebben, W.P., Feldmann, C., Mitsche, D., Dayne, A., Knetzger, K., & Alexander, P. (2009). 
Quadriceps and hamstring activation and ratios of lower body resistance training exercises. 
International Journal of Sports Medicine, 30, 1-7