31 Leg Exercises at Home That Require No Equipment | SELF

Looking to seriously challenge your lower body without leaving the comfort of your living room? You’ve come to the right place. These 31 leg exercises at home require just your bodyweight—no heavy weights, exercise tools, or gym membership required.

First, though, why does leg strength matter? Put simply, having strong legs is super important for achieving fitness goals and for making everyday life feel a little bit easier. Think about it: Whether you’re deadlifting a heavy barbell, running a marathon, walking up a flight of stairs, doing quad exercises, or simply picking up a squirming toddler, you need leg muscles to get the job done. And the stronger those legs muscles are, the better job you’ll do.

Fortunately, leg exercises don’t have to be complicated to be effective—and they don’t need to require any equipment either. There are plenty of bodyweight leg exercises you can add to your at-home workout routine that will help you improve your strength in daily life and get closer to your fitness goals too.

“Bodyweight exercises are realistic and functional, meaning that they help us strengthen our muscles that we use in our daily lives,” Jess Sims, a certified personal trainer and Peloton instructor, tells SELF. “For example, when we squat, we are essentially sitting down into an imaginary chair, which will help improve our posture when we actually sit in a chair. When we stand up from a squat, we drive through our heels and brace our core—we are essentially building great habits that translate into our lives outside the gym.”

Bodyweight leg exercises are also valuable for learning proper form before you add weights to certain moves. “We shouldn’t be using weights until we’ve mastered basic lunge, hinge, and squat movements without weights,” Sims says. Another bonus of bodyweight moves? “You have your body all the time, and it’s free to use, so you can do exercises anywhere and at anytime!” If you’ve got an arsenal of moves that you can literally do anywhere, there’s a better chance you’ll fit them into your routine.

The leg-strengthening exercises below will help you build strength while also preparing your body to do more complex moves with weights. But before you give them a try on your next leg day workout, read on for some tips on how to make the most of these kinds of moves.

How can I work my legs without weights or machines?

One easy way to make legs exercises with no equipment feel challenging? Incorporate single-leg work, Ava Fagin, CSCS, sports performance intern coach at Cleveland State University, tells SELF. Single-leg moves, also called unilateral moves, require you to rely on the strength of just one leg to perform a movement, which means they often feel more intense than bilateral moves (moves done with both legs). So adding moves like lunges, single-leg glute bridges, and single-leg calf raises to your at-home leg workouts is a really easy way to up the strengthening ante.