Lately I haven’t been blogging too much about my workouts. I’ve certainly been exercising, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been going to physical therapy for a torn calf muscle. While I’ve been moving a lot, my workouts haven’t been quite as diverse and hardcore as usual. This means no recent 2-hour sweaty hikes with Harley. No mountain biking excursions with Adam. And no workouts drilling my lower body as of late. Am I anxious to get back into workout normalcy? Absolutely. But I’ve been trying to abandon my ignore-the-pain-balls-to-the-wall mentality and adopt a more listen-to-my-body mindfulness. So what have I been doing?
I’ve been trying to keep things at least a bit interesting by coming up with new workout ideas – like the 20 exercise routine or my sit up/push up/plank challenge. My workout routine has largely consisted of doing the stretches and exercises from physical therapy daily; long, easy walks with my pup; yoga; and strength training. I’ve become really aware of the fact that when you injure one part of your body, a lot of other areas are affected. Because of my torn calf, my foot, ankle, gluteus muscles, and hip have become weaker than on the other side. Instead of solely focusing on my calf, I’m doing a lot of things to help strengthen those other areas so that hopefully, I can even things out and prevent any further damage. While some of the exercises include bands and crazy contraptions at my physical therapy office, a good amount of them require no equipment and can be done anywhere. Here are my favorite everyday lower body moves that help to strengthen the legs, butt and hips:
Squats
(via)
Good old fashioned squats my friends! I’ve always been big on squats – the only difference is that with an injury, I’m doing them sans dumbbells or a bar. I like doing squats at physical therapy because it makes me start sweating and feeling like I’m getting a real workout in. My physical therapist ordering me to do squats is awfully convenient since I’m taking part in a holiday squat challenge where I pledged to do 50 of them every day this month anyways! An explanation of how to do various squat exercises with proper form can be found here.
Curtsy Lunges
(via)
I’m a big fan of curtsy lunges, as they help strengthen the quads, glutes and calf muscles. The exercise is explained here.
Clamshells
(via)
This exercise is good for strengthening the hip abductor muscles. The typical way of doing a clamshell is to bring your top knee up like a clamshell opening, then lower it back down to starting position, as pictured above. To make it more challenging, once I bring my top knee up, my foot then takes the lead of my knee and I bring it up to be parallel with the rest of my leg. You can read more on how to do the exercise here.
Bridges with Leg Extensions
(via)
I’ve been doing 45 reps of this bridge exercise daily. Click here for an explanation of how to properly do this move.
Face Down Hip Extension
(via)
This exercise really made me realize how weak my left glute muscles are compared to my right. Yikes!It really focuses on the smaller booty muscles that I must not work too often. To perform this movement, simply flex your foot and lift it up, as show above, while keeping your leg straight, then return to starting position. Do 30 on each side.
I hope to be back to 100% very soon, but until then, I am going to keep being diligent about taking it somewhat easy and doing these exercises! Oh, and I’ll also continue to remember motivational quotes like the ones below…
Leave a Reply