Body Leg Lifts

🎯 Glutes🏋️ Body onlyIsolationHamstrings (2°)

How to do the body leg lifts

  1. Using a post or tall weight bench for balance stand straight with your abs drawn in.
  2. Raise one off the ground and behind you while standing on the other leg.
  3. Slowly lower the leg and raise it again while flexing the gluts.
  4. Repeat with your other leg.

Muscles worked

The prime mover is the gluteus maximus, which is the strongest hip extensor you have and drives the pelvis forward at the top of the movement.

Even with a single joint doing the moving, the muscle is not working alone — the hamstrings assist hip extension and slow the knee down.

Every exercise for:GlutesHamstrings

How this movement works

Everything happens at one joint. That gives you direct control over where the tension sits; the trade-off is that the muscle gets no help, so the load that feels hard here is a fraction of what a multi-joint version of the pattern would take. Slow, complete repetitions beat heavy ones.

It is filed under strength: produce force against resistance for a countable number of repetitions, and progress the resistance over time.

What you need

No equipment at all. The resistance is your own bodyweight, so you progress by changing leverage, range or tempo rather than by adding plates — and you can do it anywhere.

Every exercise using:Body only

These train the glutes too, using equipment this one does not:

Related exercises

Illustration: Everkinetic — CC BY-SA 4.0 — license. Modified versions are shared under the same license. Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.