Best Leg Exercises
Build a Strong, Athletic Base With These 10 Great Lower Body Movements
December 19, 2025
Your legs are, quite literally, your body’s foundation. They have the difficult job of carrying the weight of the rest of your body, and everything from standing up to jumping requires a coordinated effort from multiple lower-body muscle groups.
The benefits of strong legs don’t just accrue to athletes, though. They’ll help you injury-proof your body, correct your gait, and improve your posture. And let’s not forget about the aesthetic benefits. A strong chest, boulder shoulders, and bulging biceps are great and all, but if they’re attached to a pair of stick legs, you’ll find yourself wearing pants all year.
RELATED: **[How Often Should You Work Out Your Legs?](…
Best Leg Exercises
Build a Strong, Athletic Base With These 10 Great Lower Body Movements
December 19, 2025
Your legs are, quite literally, your body’s foundation. They have the difficult job of carrying the weight of the rest of your body, and everything from standing up to jumping requires a coordinated effort from multiple lower-body muscle groups.
The benefits of strong legs don’t just accrue to athletes, though. They’ll help you injury-proof your body, correct your gait, and improve your posture. And let’s not forget about the aesthetic benefits. A strong chest, boulder shoulders, and bulging biceps are great and all, but if they’re attached to a pair of stick legs, you’ll find yourself wearing pants all year.
RELATED: How Often Should You Work Out Your Legs?
Now that you’re resolved to train your legs, though, where do you start? We’ve picked out the ten best leg exercises for muscular growth, strength, and athletic performance. You don’t have to do all of them; feel free to mix and match. We promise, if you focus on progressing in these movements, you’ll grow a pair of legs to be proud of, and you’ll never again be ashamed to wear shorts.
Barbell Back Squat
**What’s good about it: **The barbell back squat is not only the single best leg exercise, but possibly the best single exercise, period. It recruits a huge amount of your musculature, enabling you to lift heavy weights and progress quickly, and the strength you build in this exercise directly translates into athletic performance. There’s also something deeply satisfying about heavy, full-range squats; they’re a marker not only of your strength but of your flexibility.
What muscles it works: Quads, glutes, hamstrings, and core
Technique tips: With your feet shoulder-width apart and the barbell resting on your shoulders (not on your neck), and while keeping a tight core, descend to the ground by dropping your hips. Maintain core tightness and a neutral spine, and descend until your quads are roughly parallel to the ground. Pause for a split second at depth, and then drive through your heels to return to the starting position.
Lunges
What’s good about it: To properly train your legs, you need to work them in tandem and in isolation, and lunges are a painful, willpower-testing way to torch those muscle fibers. Many athletes happily take to the squat rack but shy away from lunges – and we can understand. These require good core stability, strong and flexible hips, and good muscular endurance. You don’t need to use very heavy weights. What you need to do is concentrate on perfecting your form and lunging to your full range of motion.
What muscles it works: Quadriceps, glutes, hamstrings, calves, and core
Technique tips: While holding two dumbbells or a barbell over your shoulders (as in the back squat), lunge forward until the knee of the lunging leg is roughly over your foot, making your upper leg parallel to the floor. From this position, push through your front foot, driving yourself back to the starting position. Repeat these exact motions with the other leg.
RELATED: Should You Do Squats Every Day?
Barbell Front Squat
What’s good about it: The front squat is the often-neglected baby brother of the back squat. You won’t be able to use as much weight or recruit as much muscle fiber, but that doesn’t mean front squats don’t belong in every self-respecting leg routine. They emphasize the anterior chain, especially the quadriceps, and athletes – whose movements are often quad-dominant – need to pay particular attention to their front squat strength, since this movement also has high applicability to all kinds of sports. Another big benefit to the front squat is the barbell position: if you can get the requisite flexibility in your shoulders to hold the bar in front of you, you’ll take a lot of stress off your back and spine. Many people recovering from back injuries find front squats much easier to perform.
What muscles it works: Quadriceps and upper back**
Technique tips:
** With your feet shoulder-width apart, rest the barbell on your front delts, while keeping it in place with your fingers under the bar and your elbows at shoulder-height (this might require some work on your flexibility). Descend by lowering your hips, while preventing your knees from caving inward. Stop when your quads are parallel to the ground, and then return to the starting position by pushing into the floor. Make sure your elbows don’t drop, as that will cause the bar to roll out of position and possibly fall.
Leg Press
What’s good about it: The leg press is a safe and effective way to train your legs at a high volume. For this reason, they’re a staple exercise among bodybuilders, who are always seeking to maximize time under tension, but athletes shouldn’t neglect it, either. A bigger leg is, generally, a stronger leg, and few exercises contribute to leg growth quite like the leg press.
What muscles it works: Quadriceps, glutes, and hamstrings
Technique tips: The leg press requires a leg press machine, in which you sit with your back tight against the pad. Place your legs on the leg press platform at roughly shoulder-width distance, then, when you’re ready, disengage the safety mechanism (these vary by machine) and push into the platform, driving through your heels, until your legs are almost straight. Then descend slowly, controlling the weight, until your quads are parallel to the platform. If this is your first time doing the leg press, deliberately lower the weight until you’re familiar with your limits.
Stiff-Legged Deadlifts
What’s good about it: If you live in the modern world, there’s a good chance your posterior chain is weak and underdeveloped. Why? Because you probably spend an inordinate amount of time sitting in a chair. Here’s an iron law of human musculature: muscle imbalances lead to injuries, and one of the more common imbalances is overdeveloped quadriceps and underdeveloped hamstrings. Stiff-legged deadlifts directly address that weakness, enabling you to fortify your posterior chain.
What muscles it works: Glutes, hamstrings and lower back
Technique tips: Stand tall, while holding either a barbell or a pair of dumbbells in front of your quads. Lower the weight by sticking your butt out and bending at the weight, doing your best to keep your hamstrings straight. Your flexibility will determine your range of motion, so stop when you begin to feel a slight discomfort, and then rise up with a straight back to the starting position.
Hip Thrust
What’s good about it: Hip thrusts are an old-school exercise that fell out of favor until very recently, when some Instagram influencers discovered that they’re extremely effective at building up the glutes.
What muscles it works: Glutes, hamstrings, hip adductors
Technique tips: Hip thrusts can be done with or without weights, and with or without the assistance of a machine. The basic setup involves you on your back, with your knees raised and your butt and feet flat on the floor. Contract your glutes to drive your butt up until your quads and your torso form a straight line. That’s the end point. From there, descend slowly to the original position. That’s one rep. A more common variation involves using a barbell, as demonstrated below.
Deadlift
What’s good about it: The deadlift competes with the barbell back squat for the title of “single best exercise,” and for good reason. It recruits muscles from across the entire body, and enables you to work with very heavy weights. Making progress in the deadlift will directly translate into athletic performance, and help you see strength gains across your body, from larger muscle groups like the hamstrings and glutes to smaller groups like your forearms.
What muscles it works: Hamstrings, glutes, back, core, traps, forearms
Technique tips: Approach a loaded barbell on the floor, with your feet shoulder-width apart, until the bar is over the midpoint of your feet. Use a hip hinge to lower your hands until they can grasp the bar, and then pull the slack out of the bar, while keeping your back straight. You’re now “locked in” and ready to lift. Push into the floor, engaging the quads, to get the initial lift off, and then use your hamstrings and glutes to “unhinge” until you’re standing straight, with the bar at your thighs.
Leg Extension
What’s good about it: Leg extensions get a bad reputation, mostly because if done incorrectly they can be dangerous, but if used correctly, they’re a great way to tax your leg muscles safely and stimulate growth, particularly in the quadriceps. Keep the weights low, control your tempo, and don’t fully lock out your legs at the conclusion of each rep. Do that and you’ll see tear-drop-shaped quads in no time.
What muscles it works: Quadriceps
Technique tips: This exercise requires a machine. You’ll be seated, with your legs beneath a padded lever that you can only move by contracting your quadriceps until your legs are straight. One important point: don’t fully lock out your legs at the extension point. You’ll save your knees a lot of stress and keep stress where you want it, on your quads.
Power Clean
What’s good about it: If the benefits of an exercise were the only consideration, power cleans would be up there with squats and deadlifts: they’re that beneficial. We’re talking increased strength and increased explosive power, all of which directly translate into better athletic performance.
What muscles it works: Quads, hamstrings, glutes, core, traps
Technique tips: Here’s an immediate caveat: the power clean is an Olympic lift, and like all Olympic lifts, it’s extremely technical. That means you almost certainly need a coach or veteran Olympic lifter to observe and critique your form, because as a beginner, you will make mistakes, and if you make mistakes while attempting a heavy or even moderately heavy lift, you can do real damage to your back. So what follows are instructions, but consider purchasing some in-person coaching before you attempt this lift with anything heavier than a broomstick.
The power clean begins like a deadlift, with the bar on the floor and your stance and address identical to the deadlift. The initial “pull” is identical to the deadlift as well, but because the weight is lighter and because you’re training explosiveness, you’ll be able to “get under” the bar once it reaches its apex, at which point you “catch it” as if you’re doing a front squat.
Calf Raise
What’s good about it: Calves are a common weak point (see early Arnold Schwarzenegger), requiring high volume and high frequency to grow. Calf raises isolate your calves, making them a great finishing move at the conclusion of a leg routine. They’re also easy to perform with bodyweight, even outside of a gym, so feel free to crank a few sets out at the office or in your home.
What muscles it works: Calves
Technique tips: Standing tall, simply shift your weight to the front of your toes, until you’re up on your tippy-toes, then descend to flat feet again. One time up and down is a single repetition. You can increase the degree of difficulty by holding on to a weight or by increasing the range of motion by standing on a plate.
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