Top 7 Lower Body Pushing Exercises for Stronger Legs and Glutes

You need to push yourself every day at the gym, and you’ll need to push your lower body as well. Working those push muscles is one of the best ways to build strong legs and get better at the exercises you love.

So let’s get your quads and glutes in the strongest shape of your life. Here are our favorite lower body push-day exercises.

Barbell Squat

Squatting is good for a lot more than just getting up from a chair. In fact, squatting movements are some of the best exercises for your entire body, let alone your legs and glutes. Believe it or not, a proper squat engages over 80% of all the muscles in your lower body.

But with a barbell squat, we’re targeting the leg muscles specifically. Be prepared for your quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes to be sore the next day.

Here’s how to do a barbell squat:

• Place the barbell across your upper back, just below your neck.
• Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, toes pointing slightly outward.
• Keeping your chest up and back straight, bend your knees and lower your hips as if you’re sitting back into a chair.
• Push through your heels to stand back up, fully extending your knees and hips.

Barbell squats are infinitely variable, too. You can swap the barbell out for some dumbbells and do this movement with one leg at a time. Or, you can place the barbell in a front squat position to give your quads a little more love. You can even do this movement with a resistance band around your knees to add extra resistance and target your glutes more effectively.

Leg Press

If it’s got “push” in the name, it’s probably a great push day exercise. Leg presses are one of the most loved (or hated) exercises in the gym, but they’re one of the best for making your quads and glutes get strong.

You’ll need a leg press machine to do this move. To get started:

• Sit on the machine with your back against the pad and feet flat on the platform.
• Push through your heels to extend your legs, fully extending your knees without locking them.
• Slowly lower the platform back to the starting position, keeping your knees slightly bent.

The wider your stance on the leg press, the more you’ll target your glutes and outer thighs. If you’re just starting out, try a narrower stance to focus more on your quads. You can even add a resistance band around your knees to give yourself extra support if you’re learning how to do leg presses for the first time.

Lunge

When you think of someone who’s in great shape, you probably envision strong legs. And the lunge is perhaps the greatest exercise to make that happen.

To do a lunge with dumbbells:

• Hold the dumbbells at your sides with palms facing your thighs.
• Step forward with one foot and lower your body until your front knee is at a 90-degree angle and your back knee is almost touching the ground.
• Push through your front heel to return to the starting position, then repeat with the other leg.

Doing lunges with dumbbells is a classic, but did you know that you lose your muscle’s maximum contraction at the bottom and the top of the movement? This can make the movement a little bit less effective. Speediance gym Monster uses the latest muscle science to give you the perfect amount of resistance at every point during your rep. Isotonic training lets you develop strength, power, and agility all in a fraction of the time as your typical training method.

Calf Raise

Your calf is actually composed of two muscles: the gastrocnemius and the soleus. The gastrocnemius is often undertrained in traditional exercise routines. But there is an exercise that targets this muscle with ease.

The calf raise is a simple yet effective exercise:

• Stand with your feet hip-width apart, holding onto a support for balance.
• Raise your heels off the ground, standing on your tiptoes.
• Slowly lower your heels back to the ground.

This simple variation targets a new part of the muscle to help you build stronger calves and improve your overall lower body strength.

Glute Bridge

During a squat, you're pushing your weight up from the ground. But with a glute bridge, you can think about lifting your hips towards the ceiling. While both movements target the same muscle groups, glute bridges give you more control over how much resistance you want to work with.

To do a glute bridge:

• Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the floor.
• Push through your heels to lift your hips off the ground, squeezing your glutes at the top.
• Slowly lower your hips back to the starting position.

This is another move that targets the glutes, those powerful muscles in your backside. Glute bridges are one of the most popular and effective exercises for working those muscles, and you can even do variations with one leg to isolate one side of the glutes.

Step-Up

Step-ups target your quadriceps, glutes, and hamstrings. You can also target muscles like your calves and hip flexors depending on how exactly you choose to do them.

The quintessential variation is a dumbbell step-up:

• Stand in front of a step or bench, holding dumbbells at your sides.
• Step up with one foot, followed by the other, and then step down in reverse order.

Think of climbing a staircase to engage your muscles properly. You can also do this movement with a higher step to increase the difficulty and target your glutes more effectively. Additionally, you can do this movement with a resistance band around your ankles to add extra resistance and improve your balance.

Pistol Squat

While a pistol squat won’t allow you to move as much weight as many other squat variations, this is a great move to incorporate into your push day because it also forces you to use some core stability.

To do a pistol squat:

• Stand on one leg with the other leg extended straight in front of you.
• Squat down as low as you can while keeping your back straight and chest up.
• Push through your standing heel to stand back up.

The key to this move is to keep your balance and control. If you start to feel unstable, try holding onto a support with one hand until you build up your strength and balance. Keep that core nice and tight, and focus on driving that weight straight down.

This move targets the quads, hamstrings, and glutes, but we love it because you can use it as part of a compound movement. Add a calf raise at the top of your squat to work those calves, or throw in a jump squat to make this an exceptional full-body cardio exercise.