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If your workouts have started to get boring and monotonous, consider challenging yourself.  Giving yourself a workout challenge to work through every month can help give you some motivation when you feel like you just don’t want to do it anymore.  This 28-Day Leg Challenge will help you build a strong foundation of leg exercises start to sculpt those muscles we rely on every day.  Each day builds upon the one before it to strengthen your leg muscles in four weeks.  And, even better, only takes minutes a day to complete.

Exercises Used in This Challenge

Squat

Stand with feet shoulder width apart.  Then go down as if you are going to sit in a chair.  Keep your back as straight as possible stretching your arms out in front of you for balance.  While you won’t be able to keep your back completely perpendicular to the floor, the more you do the more it will work your glutes.

Wide Leg Squat

Stand with your feet wider than your shoulders.  Keep your toes pointed forward and go down as if you are going to sit in a chair.  Stretch your arms in front of you for balance and, once again, try to keep your back up and straight.

Plié Squat

Again, stand with your feet wider than your shoulders but this time point your toes outward.  Placing your hands down in front of you, squat down.  Focus on using your thigh muscles to lower and lift you up.

Side Lunges

While standing in a wide stance, slowly lower yourself to one side and back up again.  On the next rep, slowly lower yourself to the other side and back up again. 

Lunges

Stand with feet shoulder width apart.  Step forward with your right leg and bend your knee until your thigh is parallel and your leg is perpendicular to the floor.  Do not let your knee go past your toes as this can injure your knee.  Push back with your right foot and return to standing.  Repeat with the left leg.

Outer Thigh Pulses

Lie down on your left side with your legs straight, one on top of the other, and then slowly raise your upper body using your elbow for support.  Raise your right leg until you feel resistance and pulse the leg up and down.  You should feel it in your outer thigh and glutes.  Roll over to your right side and repeat with the left leg.

Inner Thigh Pulses

Lie down you your left side and raise your upper body up onto your elbow once again.  Keeping your left leg straight, bring your right leg up and over your left leg resting your foot on the ground near your left thigh.  You will feel it in your inner thigh.  Lift your left leg up as far as you can and pulse.  Roll to your right side and repeat with the right leg.

28-Day Leg Challenge

Here is the 28-Day Leg Challenge (For a printable copy you can hang on your wall, enter your information below):

Every day, throughout this challenge, we will be increasing the reps for each exercise.  I have started this challenge with only 5 reps for all the exercises except for the pulses.  We will start with 10 pulses.  This may seem like a low number but with 7 exercises you are going to get tired fast if you aren’t used to it.  If you feel this number is too easy to start, feel free to start with a higher number and continue to build from there.  Alternatively, if you feel that 5 is too many and you can’t push through, start with a lower number that is doable but pushes your limits.

The plan is to start on a Monday and add one rep each weekday to each exercise with the exception of the pulse exercises.  On the weekends, you will maintain whatever number you are on.  For the pulse exercises, we will keep those numbers steady increasing it by 5 every week.  However, as we do these last, I recommend achieving the number of pulses on the calendar and then continuing on as far as you can go for each one.  Try to build up to 100 pulses on each leg for each pulse exercise.

Follow up each daily challenge with a good stretching routine like the 5-Minute Morning Stretch.