Today I focused on legs and glutes. The exercises I did were:
- Squats
- Lateral leg raises
- Fire hydrants
- Donkey kicks
- Hip thrusts
- Bulgarian split squats
From last week, I changed two of the exercises to donkey kicks and hip thrusts to suit my level of progress. I also changed the reps and sets of each exercise to challenge myself. Last week I had only 10 reps and 3 sets of each exercise, and although I felt the burn when I was doing the exercises, I didn't feel as if I was challenging myself and I didn't feel the burn or ache the next day. I did 15 reps and 4 sets of each exercise today and I really struggled. I was thinking about not completing it, but I knew that was my mind quitting and not my body so I pushed through and eventually completed it. I felt so proud afterwards. The Bulgarian split squats were definitely the most painful and hard for me, as it's really targeting the quads and glutes on one leg at a time rather than the easier version of normal squats. For cool down, I did a quick 3 min leg focused stretches:
- Butterfly
- Butterfly with chest down
- Hamstring knee tuck
- Hamstring and calve straightened leg
- Spine twist
- Pretzel stretch
These stretches really helped to cool down the burning feeling in my legs and glutes. They also brought my heartbeat down closer to it's resting rate, and cooled me down. The most relaxing one I did was the spine twist, however I didn't feel it do anything for my legs. My favourite stretch was the butterfly stretch, even with the chest down as I really felt it work the adductors.
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