WARNING! Your Legs WEAKEN First! Do These 10 EXERCISES To Strengthen Them!

Your legs are one of the first muscle groups to weaken as you age. And if you don't use them, you lose them. Hello, Health Champions. Today, we're gonna talk about why it's so important to strengthen your legs and reverse the decline of aging. And I'm gonna demonstrate and talk about 10 exercises to do so. Most people don't realize how dangerous weak legs are. And as we age, what happens to most people is that the legs weaken, and we have a loss of balance, coordination, and reaction time. And with all three of those factors, what happens is we increase the risk of falls. And falls are the number one cause of traumatic death in the elderly. And the elderly also often suffer from osteoporosis, and that combined with a fall can lead to a hip fracture. And this can be so devastating that depending on complications and age, up to 50% of people will not survive the next year. And if they survive, up to 60% will require long-term care. But we can prevent that with the right lifestyle and with the right exercises. And we have to understand that it's about strength, balance, and coordination, so the exercises need to work toward that. And the right exercises will not only enlarge your leg muscles, but they will also strengthen bone, and they will support your neuromuscular connection. Because we have to understand it's not just about the muscle, it is about how well it works. So it's the muscle plus the signal from the brain and the timing of those signals down to the millisecond that gives us that coordination and reaction time. And the lifestyle we're talking about obviously consists of exercise. And exercise, what most people don't understand, is that it actually breaks the muscles down. It destroys some of the muscle fibers. But then when we rest, the body can repair them. However, that can only happen if we have the proper food. That will optimize the repair process if we can support the body to have all the raw materials that it needs. So I did a video on the food, and I started with that, not because it's the most important out of the two, but because it's the most misunderstood. So I'm gonna show you 10 different exercises that will do all the things that we talked about. And you can do all 10 of them in one session, or you can pick out two or three or four if you're not quite ready for all of them. I'll also present them in a way that you can start with the easier versions, and then as you get stronger, or if you're already fairly athletic, you can go for some of the more advanced stuff. The first one we're gonna show you is calf raises. And when you're doing calf raises, you're working two muscles. One is called the gastrocnemius, and the other is called the soleus. And if you're doing these calf raises standing up, you're gonna target both of those muscles at the same time so you don't have to worry about which one you're doing. So I'll show you a few different versions, and we're gonna start with doing them on flat ground and doing them with both feet. All you do is you stand on flat ground, you lift your heels off the floor, and you're activating your calves. And if you do these without holding onto anything, you're also training up your balance a little bit. But if you need to, you can hold onto the wall as you do them. And then once you master that, you can also do them with one leg at a time. And then most people are probably gonna need to hold onto the wall for support. But if you can do it without, then all the better. A more advanced version of the same thing is to do it on a box or a stair step. And now what's happening is when you can drop the heels down below the level of the toes, you're stretching the muscle a little bit, and you're working through a longer range of motion. You're activating the muscle more, but you're also providing more signals to the brain. And you can do that with one foot on the box or both feet on the box. If you start with two, you can work your way up to one foot at a time. Another variation of this is to do it with some weights. And you could hold onto some dumbbells, or you can have a bar on your shoulders. And this is obviously a little bit harder than doing it without weights and two feet, but it's not quite as hard as doing it with your body weight one foot at a time. So it's an intermediate step. And by varying the weights, you can also change the difficulty. The second exercise I wanna show you is squats. And it's one of my absolute favorite because it addresses so many different things. It works many different muscles. It works your quadriceps muscles on the front of your legs, but it also works the gluteus maximus, the hamstrings, and it provides a lot of core strength and even flexibility. I wanna start off showing you a very simple version of squats, which is just getting out of a chair. And this is one of the first things that people notice as they get older and they get weaker is that it's more difficult to get out of a chair or a sofa. And we're just gonna use the body weight for starters. So if you have an office chair or a chair with armrests, then simply hold on to the armrests and stand up. And when you do that, you wanna try to keep your back straight. You lean forward with your body, but you try to arch your back a little bit and keep your chest up. That way you maintain proper form. Another variation that's just slightly harder is to put your hands on your knees. Now you're not getting the support quite as high as the armrests, but you're still getting some support. The next progression is to do it without using your arms as assistance. And now you're only using your legs. So it's okay to lean forward, but try to keep your chest up so that you don't round your back and put strain on your lower back. And there's no shame in starting with the simplest of these exercises and working your way up. The most important thing is that you do something. So wherever you are, make sure that you start. And if you wanna make it just a little bit harder, you can get away from the chair and do it freestanding on the floor. And now what you wanna think about is to keep your feet shoulder width apart or slightly wider. Keeping them a little wider is easier if you're not as flexible, but don't make them super, super wide, just shoulder width or slightly wider. And then the next important thing is to keep your foot in line with the knees. So as you start squatting, there's gonna be a tendency for the knees to go out a little bit or quite a bit. And that's the direction that your toes need to point to reduce the strain on the knees. And you'll see this in a video in a second. I just wanna go over it so you know to watch for it. And the other thing is you want to make it feel as if you're having two thirds of your body weight on your heels. When people are not flexible, they have a tendency to put the weight forward on the front half of the foot, and now you're straining your knees too much. So let's take a look at that. You stand up, you square up your hips over your feet, little bit more than shoulder width apart. You keep your toes pointing out in the direction that the knees are gonna bend. And one way I like to do it is to keep my arms crossed in front of my chest. It's just a good place to put them, I think. And then it's okay to lean forward. You can stick your butt out quite a bit. Just make sure that your back is still straight so that you strive to keep your chest up. And if it feels like you're not quite flexible enough, you can spread your feet a little bit wider. And again, pay attention to which way the toes are pointing so that they're in the direction that the knees are going to bend. Now, as you can see, I'm doing them barefoot, and it's a little tougher on the flexibility. It's a little bit easier if you're wearing shoes that have a little bit of wedge so that the heel is higher than the front of the foot. It is also okay to put a slight wedge, like a little plank or a little weight, like maybe a half or one inch under your heels to help you if you're not flexible enough. But if you do that, you have to make absolutely sure that you keep two thirds of the weight on your heels so that you don't strain the knees. And to make that a little bit harder, of course, all you have to do is add some weights. And now you can use a weight bar on your shoulders, or you can use dumbbells. And if you do the dumbbell, I would suggest holding it in front of you, and that's called a goblet squat. It really works well because it maintains your posture. If you hold it like that and you make sure that you strive to keep your chest up, it really works your core muscles nicely as well. So let's see what that looks like. In this case, I'm just using a 30-pound dumbbell and I'm holding it in front of me and everything else is the same as before. And by holding it like a goblet, you're really keeping your chest up and you're maintaining a good posture. Just like before, make sure that you're keeping your weight on your heels and that your knees and toes are pointing in the same direction. And with any of these exercises, don't try to go any deeper than your flexibility allows. If you cannot maintain your back straight anymore, you're going too deep. Give it some more time, work on your flexibility, and allow it to come piece by piece. The third exercise we're going to show you is called wall sits. And this one is a little bit more limited because it basically only works the quadriceps muscle. Because it's a static muscle and you're leaning against the wall, you're not involving a lot of different muscles. So on the one hand, it's not one of my favorites because it's static. But on the other hand, it's quite safe if you don't have great balance or you need just a safe place to start. So here's what it looks like. All you do is you go and stand with your back against the wall. You put your feet out a good bit away from the wall. And you want to try to keep the distance from your knee to your foot vertical. And so if you sit down deeper, then you're going to have to move your feet out a little bit. You can start this with just a slight little bend. That makes it a very easy exercise. And because you're leaning on the wall, you're fully supported. Now you can start this with 10, 15, 20 seconds at a time if you are a beginner. Or you can hold it longer up to one or two minutes even. And as you get stronger, you can move your feet out a little bit from the wall. And you can sit down deeper and get down to about a 90 degree bend in the knees. And again, from the knee down to the foot, you should strive to keep it vertical. Exercise number four is toe walks and heel walks. And when you do the toe walk, it's the same muscles as when you did the calf raises, the gastrocnemius and the soleus. And when you walk on your heels, you're using the opposing muscles called the tibialis anterior. And when you're doing the walking, you're adding an element of balance. So again, you're practicing some of this neuromuscular communication. You're training your brain and the balance as well as activating the muscles. And a little fun fact for you is that toe walk and heel walk is also an orthopedic test. So for people who have severe back pain and there may be a disc bulge or some nerve compromise involved, now the doctors, oftentimes an orthopedist or a chiropractor, would do the heel walk and the toe walk to differentiate if the level of the disc, if the compromise might be primarily at a level of L5 or at S1. And it's really just exactly what it sounds like. You get up on your toes and you start walking. And you can keep that up as long as it feels comfortable. And then you can do several reps and you're really going to feel that exercise. Next, do the heel walk. And now obviously you are activating the front, which is the tibialis anterior. And a lot of people with shin splints are actually going to get some relief from doing that exercise. Number five is called glute bridges. And you get on your back and raise your hips up and you're going to be working your gluteus maximus, your hamstrings, and also get a lot of involvement from your core muscles. And I'm going to show you a few different versions of doing this. First, you can do it with both feet on the ground and just do it stationary or static. So you simply raise your hips up and you hold that position or you can do it dynamically. And now you keep moving up and down. And when you do this, I would suggest doing it very slowly and controlled. That way you're increasing your fine coordination a good bit. And there's no reason to do it fast. Next, you can try with one leg and you put one foot on the ground. You keep the other one outstretched and you can do it with one leg and do like 10 repetitions on one leg first and then the other. Or you can alternate and go back and forth and just use one repetition per leg and then switch. And we want to keep in mind with some of these exercises that it can be safer to do things on the floor or leaning up against the wall. But you're getting less challenge. You're getting less brain stimulation because you're supported. You don't have to maintain the balance. So it's not as complex as when you do it freestanding and have to maintain balance. Also keep in mind if you're on the ground you're not using as much gravity. It's not as much benefit for osteoporosis in terms of weight bearing. But all of these exercises have their place. So also keep in mind with all of these exercises that the more complexity, the more variables that your brain have to keep track of like balance and gravity, the more you're activating your brain and the more involved are different pathways. So that's a good thing if you can handle it. But if you can't, then you want to start with the safe exercises where you're leaning against something or you're on the ground. Now if you're on the ground, there's less benefit in terms of gravity and weight bearing to strengthen your bones. But all these exercises have their place. So try to do as many of them as you can and do the ones first that you can start with safely. Number six is lateral lunges. And I like this one because it involves a few different muscles that you wouldn't get to otherwise. But it also helps with some hip flexibility. You're going to be working your quadriceps, your gluteus maximus, your gluteus medius, and your adductors. And the adductors mean pull in toward the midline adduction. So that would be the inside of your thigh. And I'll show you a few different versions. The simplest one is to not stand with your legs too far apart. It's like just a little bit wider than a squat. And with your hands on your hips, you just sit down side to side a little bit. And again, keep your knee and foot pointing in the same direction. If you want to make it a little bit more difficult, you widen your feet and you start going deeper. You can do that with hands on your hips or you can start with moving a hand to the knee for support. But now you can get a little bit deeper and a little bit wider. And another version is to keep your arms across your chest and then go even deeper and put your elbow to the knee. Now, that can be a nice way of gauging how far you're going so that you have an endpoint to the movement. And the last one would be just a little bit harder. It looks almost exactly like the one where you put your elbow to the knee. But now what you're doing is you're not leaning forward quite as much. And by not putting the elbow to the knee, you don't have a designated endpoint. So it's a little bit more strenuous. It puts a little more challenge on your core muscles when you don't know where that endpoint is. And you try to keep your body a little bit more upright. Number seven is lateral leg raises. And now you'll be laying on your side and just lifting the leg straight up to the side. And with that, you get an almost complete isolation of the gluteus medius, which is the muscle on the side of your hip. But you also get a little bit of involvement of the TFL or the tensor fascia lata, which sits a little bit more on the front of the hip. And here's what that looks like. It is quite simple. The only trick is to try to keep your hips at 90 degree angle to the floor. And I'll show you also how you don't want to do it. So when you do this exercise and you get tired, then there'll be a tendency to rotate the hips backwards so that you can use other muscles. And the other reason is that it feels like a limited range of motion. That if you rotate your hips back, you can lift the leg higher, but that's not what we're going for here. Another good exercise for the glute medius is to simply stand on a box or on a stair step. You hold on to something and then one leg is hanging off the edge and you simply drop it down below the level of the stair step and then you lift it up as high as you can. So you're basically just wobbling your hips side to side and don't try to force it because it's not going to feel like you're getting very far, but try to keep a pure motion of side to side and not start moving your hips in any other direction. But the plane of the motion should be straight side to side. And number eight is planks. And it's one of my favorite exercises that is static because even though it's static, it really works so many muscles so well. It's going to involve your abdominals, your straights and obliques and transfers. It's going to work on your glute maximus. It's going to work on your quadriceps and it's going to involve virtually every muscle of your core. And if you're a beginner, it is totally okay to start with your knees on the ground. You put your elbows down and you raise your hips up and you just hold that for as long as you can. And you can start with as little as 20 seconds. And then as you get stronger, try to work up to a minute or maybe even two when you get really strong. And then you can, of course, do several sets of that. Now, if you're a little bit stronger, what you can do is to do it with elbows and toes on the ground. So you lift your knees up, you get a longer lever and you make it more difficult that way. Now, I do want to talk about something with the planks though, because as people go longer and try to hold longer and longer, there's a tendency to get sloppy. And you don't want to go longer at the expense of keeping good form. So if you get tired and you start creating an arch in your back, that's not a good thing, especially if you have back problems. So what you want to do is you want to try to rotate the hips forward, kind of tuck under the hips. And I'll try to demonstrate here so you can see it clearly. And we'll go back and forth a little bit. So if you feel like your hips are falling toward the ground and you get more of an arch in your back, that's not a great thing. Try to maintain the hips tucked under so your back is as flat as possible. And if that means that you can't go as long, then so be it. Just work up your strength and then go from there. Number nine is step ups. And it's one of my favorites because there's so many variations of it that you can change the intensity. And it also involves a lot of balance and coordination that you can introduce. And you can do it on a staircase. You can do it on boxes. And I'm going to show you some of that. So the simplest way is just to use a staircase and you start walking up. And you can do it one step at a time. You can do it with support holding on to something or without holding on if you feel safe to do that. Then for the more advanced, you can do two steps at a time or even three steps at a time. And here's what that might look like. It's the simplest version and it's really just walking up the stairs. And if you need to or feel safer, I would always recommend you start with the safest and hold on to something. And if you feel safe to do so, then you could walk up stairs without holding on. And the good thing about this is also that it's so easy to do multiple repetitions. You can just go down and start over. And for the more advanced who really like a challenge, you could try to do it with three steps at a time, three stair steps. And for this, you probably either need to have really long legs like I do, or maybe where each step isn't quite so high. But don't force it. For most people, two steps at a time are going to be plenty. Now, if you have access to a box or even better several boxes, they could be in height anywhere from 4 inches to 20 inches, which would be 10 to 50 centimeters. Now you can create really interesting workouts. And I'll show you how you can even increase the complexity of that by working on arm and leg coordination. So the simplest version would just simply be to step up on the box and you can use one leg over and over, or you can alternate. So here I'm basically showing just the simplest version where you put the other foot down on the box. Now, if you want to increase the complexity and work on some balance, now you can, as you step up, you lift the other knee into a full flexion up toward your chest like you would in a sprint stride. And you want to make sure when you do that, that you coordinate it with the opposite arm. And if you have access to a bigger box, then that just makes it a little bit more challenging. So again, first you can just step up on it. And if you want to get a little more advanced, now you can lift the other knee up as if you were doing a sprint stride. And what this does, it works more on your balance, but you also get more of a full extension of the bottom leg. And in this case, I had a box that was wide enough. I could turn it on its side, but then you want to make sure that you put the weight in a way that it's not going to tip over if you have something like that. Number 10 is lunges. And this is a really, really powerful exercise. In fact, in my workout year, building up to the Olympics, I actually did more lunges than squats. And most of my heavy workouts was with lunges. But when you do them, a lot of people will step forward and then step back. And I don't recommend that at all. I would suggest that you step back and then forward, or if you have room and balance to do it, then you walk forward and you alternate legs. So let me show you first just a simple step back and step forward up to your starting position. And your goal here, like before, is to keep most of the weight, two thirds of the weight on the heel of the front leg. And then as you stand back up, you try to move up and forward. That makes it a very natural motion. And you will put much less stress on your knee and more stress on your glutes, which is where you want it. And you can also look at this one where I'm holding my arms out in front of me. That's actually to simulate a doorway. I didn't have a good place to film the doorway. So if you imagine standing in a doorway or slightly behind the doorway and you hold on to the doorframe, then you can step back and have some support while you're working on it. And then as you get more advanced, you can practice on doing it unsupported. And the benefit again of doing it unsupported is that there's more complexity. You work on your balance and your coordination, and your brain gets more benefit by having more complexity to deal with. And if you have room, you can also step forward, but then don't step back, but step forward and keep going. And again, when you do this, try to think of your hand-arm coordination so that your arm is always opposite the leg. And if you want even more of a challenge, you could even put the front foot on something elevated, or you can add weights. So here I'm going to show you with dumbbells. I'm holding two 30-pound dumbbells for a total of 60. And just as a little footnote, when I did my heavy work before the Olympics, I would actually do sets of six with 220 pounds on my shoulders. And I would even do single reps with as much as 300 pounds on my shoulder with a lunge. Now, I don't recommend that, obviously, for anyone who is not at that level. And I also don't recommend pushing the weights too soon, because if it gets too heavy, you're going to strain and you're going to lose form. So start with body weight and only add weight as you feel safe and that you can properly maintain form doing it. So I did a lot of lunges. And at one training camp, I actually had a 250-pound shot putter jump up on my back and I did some lunges with him. Now, I wish I had a video of that because it was hilarious. But even though cameras existed, no one had a cell phone back then that you could just pull out of your pocket and make a video. So start doing these exercises to strengthen your legs. And you don't have to do all of them. Do a few at a time. Do them at the level that you're capable of doing them safely and in good form. And then build on that. If you enjoyed this video, you're going to love that one. And if you truly want to master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video.