Best Leg Strengthening Excercises?

[boolay]

Other than squats, can anyone recommend any other good leg exercises that replicate a good workout when I cant get out on my bike?

[Paul Drawmer]

single knee dips (keeping the hips level), and sitting on the edge of the table, extending your leg with ankle weights (substitute shopping bag and tins if no ankle weights available)

Do these regularly to build up the strength at the end of the leg extension, will help with out of saddle climbing.

Oh, and skipping's pretty good as well.

BUT do get a turbo trainer anyway. Plug in your earbuds and drive yourself silly.

Edited by Paul Drawmer on Sunday 9th October 21:37

[anonymous-user]

stand on a step with your heels over the edge and your toes/balls on the step, push up slowly, hold and lower. repeat till you're bored.

[dubbs]

turbo trainer... spinning (proper spinning not a silly aerobic bike class)

anything else is good for specific muscle training but won't help teach the muscle their firing order for those big hills or fast cadence...

I'm getting a bushido later in the year to ensure winter can allow a good base to be setup alongside some MTBing

[rudecherub]

I'd certainly vote for one legged squats or pistols.

In fact I think they are way better than conventional squats.

Pistols - One Leg squat

[Busa mav]

a lot of the fast guys I used to ride with were site chippies , so I guess non stop squatting works quite well.

[okgo]

rudecherub said:

I'd certainly vote for one legged squats or pistols.

In fact I think they are way better than conventional squats.

Pistols - One Leg squat

haha, just tried this on aching legs and fell over! They are hard.

[boolay]

okgo said:

rudecherub said:

I'd certainly vote for one legged squats or pistols.

In fact I think they are way better than conventional squats.

Pistols - One Leg squat

haha, just tried this on aching legs and fell over! They are hard.

Tried to do one in the toilet at work earlier... I didn't succeed!!

[rudecherub]

okgo said:

rudecherub said:

I'd certainly vote for one legged squats or pistols.

In fact I think they are way better than conventional squats.

Pistols - One Leg squat

haha, just tried this on aching legs and fell over! They are hard.

Yup. They are :P

It's balance and strength, which is more useful real world as when push comes to shove you're not going to be inside a squat stand or a machine.

I started out using the stairs, ie bottom steps, to lower my arse onto. So you can steady yourself as balance and strength get better.

Some people use a broom handle / door handle or similar to balance with, but I found it to easy to cheat.

Once competent I started using dumbells to add weight, the wonderful thing being I wasn't loading a bar with massive weights and compressing my neck and spine to get results.

It's comparable to weighted pull ups in that your body weight plus is equivalent to a lot of metal on a bar.

Oh and the calf raises - again one leg at a time work too.

[JuniorD]

Samsons chair is a good exercise for the thigh muscles. Best thing is the light headed feeling right afterwards as all the blood rushes back. Almost orgasmic