If you’ve been looking to spice up your leg workout you’re in luck. Today I have a challenging hamstring and butt exercise that is somewhat unconventional. Very few people take advantage of this exceptional exercise and I hope that this post will change that.

When you think about training your hamstrings, the most common exercises that come to mind are Stiff Leg Deadlifts and Leg Curls. I’ve been hooked on the T-Bar Stiff Leg Deadlift for the past few months ever since my buddy Tom Venuto introduced them to me. I get an amazing stretch and contraction with that hamstring exercise. I’ll be sure to record a video of the T-Bar Stiff Leg Deadlift soon. The regular Deadlift also makes for one heck of a glute and hamstring exercise.

When I asked the members of Tom’s Burn The Fat Inner Circle if they had any alternative exercises that really blast the hammies and glutes I was surprised to hear Tom suggest Glute-Ham Raises. I was even more surprised when Tom mentioned that Glute-Ham Raises are not only difficult, but you can expect 3x the muscle soreness afterward.

Not every gym has a Glute-Ham Raise machine, but the sad thing is that my gym does have one and I’ve neglected it for the past 8 years… and from what I’ve witnessed, everyone else in my gym is neglecting it as well.

So, thanks to the nudge from Tom along with our mutual friend Marc David, I incorporated Glute-Ham Raises into the Metabolic Masterpiece Greek God(dess) Gauntlet workout program… and all that I can say is Wow!!!

If you are not familiar with Glute-Ham Raises, they are often performed on a hyper-extension bench. The bench that we have at our gym has a nice little knee rest that makes it ideal for performing this exercise. I’ll be recording a video later this week to demonstrate the Glute-Ham Raise, but in the meantime, here’s a great video by Marc David, author of NoBull Bodybuilding…

I have to admit that I am quite envious of the specialized equipment that Marc has access to for Glute-Ham Raises. It sure makes for a nice smooth and fluid motion.

Glute-Ham Raises are a very challenging exercise and as Tom mentioned to me, you’ll be sore for days. I had to spot my workout partner to help him get past the sticking point. He weighs a bit more than me, so it would be like I was holding a weight plate at my chest, which would probably kill me at this point as I’m just beginning to get comfortable with the exercise.

I could really feel my hammies contracting like crazy as well as getting a great stretch on the way down. It’s a different kind of feeling than doing leg curls and makes for outstanding variety.

I encourage you to give this exercise a try and be sure to let me know how it feels.

Sculpt a Masterpiece,

Scott Tousignant

About The Author

Scott Tousignant, BHK, is a Certified Fitness Consultant with a passion for transforming fitness enthusiasts into physique artists. His most recent program, Metabolic Masterpiece guides you through the process of sculpting your body into a work of art, by applying what Scott has coined, “The A.T.T.R.A.C.T. Formula.

With his synergistic, boredom busting body sculpting workouts you will melt stubborn fat and gain muscle while skyrocketing your metabolism!

If you live a busy lifestyle, workout at home, and are looking to add some variety to your leg workouts, this video will spice things up for you….

Here’s the routine:

Prisoner Squat – 10 reps
3/4 Squat – 10 reps
1 Leg Squat with a Stability Ball Against a Wall – 10 reps each leg
Jump Squats – 10 reps
Horizontal Squat – 10 reps
Squat Hold – 30 seconds

Repeat 1-2 more times

Not only is this a great leg workout… it’s also incredibly cardiovascular in nature. I guarantee that your heart will be pumping and your breathing will be labored.

This workout comes from our Fat Loss Quickie 10-Minute Metabolism Booster program, which includes 60 workouts/HIIT routines that can be performed with very little equipment, very little space, and last only 10 minutes.

From 2007 to early 2010 the 10-Minute Metabolism Booster program was the workout that kept Angie and I in great shape, producing a lean and athletic look. This was a period in our life where we were beyond busy. With two young children and two family businesses, we had very little time to workout. What worked great for us was performing a 10-minute HIIT session first thing in the morning and a 10-minute workout later in the day. This gave us two metabolic spikes throughout the day and made it easier for us to comply to the program.

One of the differences between our quick workouts and many other short burst workout programs out there, is that we apply a body part split routine. We found that focusing on just one or two body parts per day, five days per week, allowed us to work each muscle to the best of their ability and impact many more muscle fibers than full body quick workouts.

The body part split routine created a sculpted look by providing more attention to detail. Even though we had to shorten our workouts, the physique artist within me was still shining bright.

If you live a busy lifestyle and have difficulty “Fitting In” a workout, the 10-Minute Metabolism Boosting program is a great solution for you. The workouts are fun, challenging, and can fit into anyone’s hectic schedule.

The variety of workouts within the 10-Minute Metabolism Booster program will bring excitement to your training, while keeping your motivation high. That’s been one of the biggest benefits that we’ve heard from our satisfied customers during the past 3 years. They’re never bored and they look forward to their next quick workout with great enthusiasm.

If lack of time has been one of your excuses for putting off the body that you deserve… the 10-Minute Metabolism Booster program throws that excuse out the window.

No more excuses. No more putting your goals off until tomorrow. The time to make your health, fitness, and physique a top priority is NOW!

To achieving your limitless potential,

Scott Tousignant

About The Authors

Scott and Angie Tousignant have been helping busy men and women, just like you, transform their body and life for over a decade. This dynamic duo prides themselves on providing a balanced and practical approach that will motivate and inspire you to become the best YOU that you can be.

Scott and Angie have dedicated themselves to sharing their exact workouts, what they eat, and how they stay motivated to continue transforming their body’s and life.

Their line up of body transforming programs includes, Metabolic Masterpiece, Sizzlin’ Circuits, Core Plus More, Girl Empowered, 10-Minute Metabolism Booster, and More Love Less Fat.

We’re excited to share in you successful body transformation!

I was introduced to a new and unique butt exercise by my friend Richard Schuller of Decades Younger. During his recent visit I pulled out my video camera and asked him to demonstrate this great exercise to build a firm butt…

Don’t be afraid to give it a try… and when you do, be sure to come back here and let us know how it felt.

To achieving your limitless potential,

Scott Tousignant

PS Richard is our house guest for this week. Being 70 years young, he specializes in fitness for men and women over 60. If there are any questions that you have for Richard or any exercises that you would like to see him demonstrate, simply submit them in the comment box below.

In yesterday’s article Long Live Isolation Exercises we compared compound exercises vs isolation exercises along with the benefits that each one brings to the table. Today I am going to share an amazing workout that combines the power and calorie burning benefits of a compound exercise as well as the sculpting and shaping benefits of an isolation exercise…

If you are performing the leg press with your feet in the same position on the press every time, you’ll be placing more of the resistance on just a few of the muscles that make up your legs. However, by varying the position of your feet, you can isolate other muscle that make up your legs, while still experiencing the benefits of a compound movement.

For example, if you place your feet closer together and lower on the press you will hit your outer thighs and the muscle in your quads that give you the tear drop look above your knee (Vastus Medialis muscle). If you place your feet wider or higher up on the press you will hit parts of your hamstrings, inner thighs and glutes more.

My buddy Tom Venuto, author of Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle shared an awesome workout involving the leg press that is guaranteed to hit all the muscles in your legs and really get your heart pumping!

This leg press workout is demonstrated in the video above. It’s the leg press performed as a dropset with your feet in a different position for each set…

First you load up the leg press machine with a weight that you can do for 6-12 repetitions. Place your feet in the middle of the press and shoulder width apart. Hammer out as many as you can.

Now strip one plate off and perform the leg press with your feet at the bottom of the press and close together, approximately 4 inches apart. Aim for 6-12 reps.

Now strip off another plate and place your feet up high on the press and shoulder width apart. Perform 6-12 reps

Now strip off one more plate and place your feet in the middle of the press and as wide as you can go and have your toes pointing out. Perform 6-12 reps.

The only rest that you will take is the time that it takes to change the weight. For men, you can use 45 pound plates and women, it will depend on how strong your legs are. You may use 25 or 35 pound plates or if you need to go as low as 10 pound plates, that’s fine too.

This would not be your complete leg workout, although you will be pretty fried. Add in some leg extensions, leg curls, or alternating lunges to this workout and you should be toast!

Give this workout your best shot and let me know what the experience was like for you. I’d love to hear about it.

If you’re looking for another killer leg workout as well as intense workouts for the rest of your body you’ll definitely want to spend 4-8 weeks of your best effort on our ROCK That Body program. These workouts will challenge your body in a variety of ways that will shape and sculpt your physique.

Now is the time to sculpt the body that you deserve!

To achieving your limitless potential,

Scott Tousignant

The deadlift is one of the greatest exercises that you should perform no matter what your goal is. When performed properly, the deadlift targets your butt, abs, and hamstrings. But what makes this exercise so awesome is that every muscle in your body gets activated throughout the movement.

As per Paula’s request, my buddy Richard Schuller of Decades Younger, and I hit the gym to record a video, which demonstrates how to perform a proper deadlift…

Here are some of Richard’s key tips on how to perform a proper deadlift:

To get the most out of a deadlift, you need to have nearly every muscle in your body involved in the lift. That is why it is very important to have your whole body “tight” when you pull. This will maximize your power output, and lessen the chances for injury.

Your body is much like a hydraulic system. If there is any part that is relaxed, that is where all the force will go, and you will get sub-optimal results. In lifting for power you are recruiting as many muscles as you can. This is the complete opposite of isolation.

When you get into the set position, your shins should be touching the bar, and your body should feel like a giant spring that has been compressed. To get the most effective pull, begin by putting 50-100 pounds of tension on the bar…then pull it. The effect is that you don’t pull the entire weight from a dead stop. Try this a few times with a heavy pull, and you will see that it feels much lighter when you “load” the bar with tension before pulling.

Keep the bar close against your body as you pull up. If the bar drifts away from your body you will quickly lose leverage, and the weight will seem much much heavier. To protect your shins from being scraped by the bar during practice, you can get some cheap soccer shin guards.

You should feel the pull in your glutes, hamstrings, and your abs. If you feel the pull primarily in your lower back, your tail end is too high in the air, and you have probably relaxed some muscles. You will know you have the right form when you feel the pull in the gultes, hamstrings and abs.

Common mistakes are:

1) Rounding the upper back during the pull;
2) Putting the butt up too high
3) Relaxing just before the pull begins
4) Allowing the arms and shoulders to relax
5) Pulling primarily with the lower back

The deadlift is not like other gym lifts where you can practice it often. You should do it a maximum of twice per week. Lifters who train with very heavy weights generally only deadlift once per week. Keep your repetitions in the range of 5 to 8. Three sets should be sufficient for getting maximum fitness benefit from this lift. It will take a lot more out of you than you realize. However, it is one of the very best training lifts ever devised. You will develop a very strong, flexible backside, and very powerful abs by deadlifting. As I noted earlier, it will use every muscle in your body. Best of luck!

———————————————————-

Thanks Richard for those great tips on gaining the maximum benefit from the deadlift, while reducing the risk of injury.

If you enjoyed this post and demonstration, you’ll also enjoy the post How to Perform a Safe and Effective Bench Press.

Richard and I also recorded a great exercise that works your glutes. I’ll be sharing that with you soon.

Thanks for the question Paula. I appreciate it. We’re here to help you achieve the maximum benefit from your efforts.

To achieving your limitless potential,

Scott Tousignant

For today’s home office fitness challenge I’m going to share a very powerful and motivating audio to help you overcome your ‘bad’ knees as well as video demonstrations of alternative exercises that you can perform if you have knee problems. But first… Do you have ‘bad’ knees? Of course not! Yes, you may experience pain, you may have a strained ligament, worn out cartilage, and so on. But it does not mean they are bad? If you have issues with your knees you have two choices…

You can say, “My knee is bad I have to avoid exercise or at least certain exercises and that probably means I won’t be able to achieve optimal fat loss because I am limited in what I can do.”

…Or you can say, “I have an arthritic knee and I’m not going to let that stop me from achieving the body and life that I deserve. I know other people with arthritic knees that have achieved tremendous success and I’m not going to let anything get in the way of reaching my goals.”

I’m not going to deny that you are experiencing pain or discomfort, but are you going to let that limit you? Do you think that you can turn that around?

First of all, allow me to show you eight exercises that are easier on your knees and can help you strengthen them…

Alternative Leg Exercises If You Have Bad Knees

Now I would like you to listen to the powerful audio in the player at the end of this post. Please, please, please listen to the audio. It’s very inspirational. I’ll provide the transcripts below too.

Here’s a portion of an email that I received from one of my Fat Loss Quickie friends, Nan C. Loyd prior to her listening to this audio…

“Last year I had a sudden knee pain. I tried to work through it at the gym on the leg extension machine, etc., to no avail and had to quit. I finally broke down and went to the doc last week and he said, “cartilage is worn down and there is slight arthritis in knee.” He said no lunging, walking on uneven ground, jogging, pivoting, wearing heels, kneeling, etc., and no treadmill until I lose at least 30 pounds (I need to lose 90 all together).”

Here was Nan’s response after listening to the audio…

“You gave me such a fantastic answer to my question last May. You shared Shane James’ story so I began “speaking” to my knees and calling them strong, sound and that they both have new cartilage. In June, the Synvisc the doc shot into my knee was supposed to be settled and be working great. At that time, my knees began hurting instead of feeling better (not as badly, but uncomfortable enough). I was unable to sit in a chair normally with my knee bent (I had to elevate it a little). The rest of stuff the doc said (down below) I couldn’t do, I still couldn’t do.

THANK YOU!
Nan C Loyd”

Here’s the transcripts from the audio which is a conversation between myself and friend Shane James…

Shane: It was a funny situation. I had been working out and training, doing the treadmill and elliptical and all that kind of stuff. My knees were starting to get sore, and I wasn’t quite sure what was going on. They got more and more sore. They got so sore to the point where I couldn’t even get out of bed, Scott.

Scott: Wow.

Shane: Yeah. I would get out of bed, and I could barely walk. So I finally went to the doctor and I said to the doctor, “What’s going on here? I can barely move. I cannot walk.” So they sent me for tests and stuff, and my tests came back, and they said, “Well, Shane, this is what’s happened. Your knees have come off their tracks. There’s nothing to hold your kneecaps in any more.”

Scott: Jeez.

Shane: They were wobbling all over, right? I said, “So what’s the verdict? What do we have to do to get this better?” He says, “Well, it’s going to take a long, long time, and you’ve got to quit your exercise.” Quit my exercise? So that means I can never exercise again? He says, “No. You cannot exercise.”

So I went home that night. I remember this like it was yesterday. I go on home and I was like, “Oh, man! What am I going to do? I can’t exercise. Exercise has been my whole life.” Now, for that month, I kind of went through a little bit of depression, right?

Scott: Uh?huh.

Shane: It was kind of like my whole life had been taken away. I’m a motivational speaker. How am I going to be able to stand on stage and speak for eight hours? Now that’s gone too. All my goals and all my dreams, just taken away in a second. And I sat there for about a month, and this was when I started gaining some weight. I started gaining weight. I gained about 25 pounds heavier than I had been ? overweight.

All of a sudden one night I woke up and I said, “You know, that’s just his opinion. That’s his belief. That’s a suggestion he made to me. I don’t have to take that on and hold it out as true right now.”

So what I did was I started to visualize. I would lay in bed before I went to bed ? half an hour, visualize: I had strong knees. I was healthy. I was vibrant. I felt good. I was the guy with the strongest knees in the whole world.

Scott: Right.

Shane: Yeah. And every morning.

Scott: Not just stronger knees, the strongest knees in the world. Hire that man.

Shane: Did you hear that? And I would visualize that in the morning as well. And then, one of my buddies would call me, certain ones. I’d say, “Hey, look. Don’t bring up my knees any more,” because every time you say how your knees are doing, they make a suggestion that I have bad knees.

So I don’t have bad knees. I said, “You call me and you say, ‘Hey, how’s the guy with the strongest knees in the world doing?’ I’d say ‘Fine, great, thank you.’” And so, even when other friends would call me, I would say, “Look, don’t bring up my knees anymore. Don’t call me and ask me how they’re doing.” Because everyone will call me and they say, “How are your knees doing.” Well, they suck! Hello? [laughs]

Scott: [laughs]

Shane: So they all stopped asking me that question. Now, I was visualizing at home, and then when I started going back to the gym ? I wasn’t supposed to go back. And listen to this: I was on a treadmill. I could only do 0.5 walking. I was barely moving.

Scott: Mm?hmm.

Shane: Barely moving. So I started just like that, very slowly. And I would visualize on the treadmill: “The strongest knees. I have the strongest knees in the whole world. Nobody in the whole world has stronger knees than I do.”

I did this for about a month every night. And I had everybody around me. I said, “Bring that energy to me. Bring that energy to me. Visualize for me, me having the strongest knees.” I believe everybody got on board with me. And a month later, I was up on the treadmill at a 2, then a 3, 4, 5. Now I’m at an incline of 4, and my knees are just about perfectly better. Wow.

Scott: Wow. That’s incredible. From someone who is not supposed to exercise ever again, or at least for a very, very long time, and can hardly walk at all, that’s incredible, incredible.

That all started with an authority figure, someone whom we’re supposed to look up to: a doctor telling you. He instilled that belief in your head that you’re not going to be able to do that, and it took you over time to say, “That’s his belief. I want to develop my own belief. I’m not going to let him limit me.”

Shane: That’s right. So often in life, we decide to take on the beliefs and opinions of other people, and we hold them as true. But that’s just their opinion. So I even went back to him. I said, “Hey. You know that suggestion you put in my head about my knees? That wasn’t very good!” [laughs] Honestly, he didn’t really know what to say. He had nothing to say to me. “Well, that’s good you overcame it.” That’s about all he said.

Scott: Yeah. And there are a few things, like even talking about your friends. Your friends were trying to be nice, asking how your knees were, giving you that sympathy. I find that happens a lot in weight loss. People are looking for sympathy. If they’ve got a thyroid problem, or they’ve got some other health issue where they struggle to lose weight.

Whatever their excuse or reason is for struggling, their friends come up to them and they’re sympathetic and they’re trying to be nice to that person, but what that person doesn’t need from you is the sympathy. They need those positive thoughts. They need you to instill the positive beliefs to get you to live that unstoppable lifestyle.

End of transcript!

Your task for today is to perform the alternative leg exercises in the video above and challenge your limiting beliefs about your ‘bad’ knees. Remember, nothing can get in the way of your success.

You ROCK! Enjoy the experience,

Scott Tousignant

PS If you need help overcoming your limiting beliefs and are looking for extra motivation and accountability, myself and my friends in the Fat Loss Quickie home office fitness program are ready and willing to provide you with that boost and inspiration to help you live the quality of life that you deserve.

I’ve got news for you ladies. If you want lean and sexy thighs, the inner and outer thigh machine is not your solution. In fact you don’t need any fancy equipment at all. You can create that firm butt and tight legs in the comfort of your home. Here’s a list of the top 10 most effective exercise to build a desirably firm butt and sensational thighs.

Top 10 Best Leg Exercises

• Front Squat
• Dead Lift
• Split Squat
• Reverse Lunge
• Step Ups
• 1 Leg Bench Squat
• 1 Leg Stability Ball Leg Curl
• Bulgarian Lunge
• Deep-Partial Squat
• 1 Leg Ball Squat Against The Wall

As you can see, @FitChic and I performed each of the top 10 leg exercises from the comfort of our own home with very limited space and very limited amount of equipment.

The above exercises are challenging, but I am certain that you can work your way up to them. For many of the 1 legged exercise you can begin by using both legs.

It’s time to take your fat loss journey to the next level. I know you’re ready!

Have an absolutely amazing day!

Your Dream Body Awaits You…

Scott Tousignant
aka “The 10 Minute Man”