9 Exercises I Do Weekly for Lean, Strong, Toned Legs

Hey, it's J.J. here. You know, I've been talking about environmental toxins forever, and laundry detergent is a sneaky one. A lot of them contain harsh chemicals like dyes, preservatives, and even UV brighteners. Those brighteners don't actually clean anything. They just coat fabric so your eyes think things look whiter or brighter. That's more chemicals I don't want on my family's sheets or skin. And if you've got sensitive skin or allergies around the house, this can be a big problem. That's what got my attention about Earth Breeze. It looks like a dryer sheet, but it's actually laundry detergent. You toss one in the washer and that's it. No pouring, no mess, and no heavy plastic jug. Their packaging is lightweight cardboard, which helps reduce plastic waste. And if you choose the fragrance free option, it's gentle, hypoallergenic, non irritating, and non sensitizing. I really like how simple it is and how fresh and clean everything comes out without those unnecessary chemicals. Right now you can try Earth Breeze for up to 40% off with free gifts@earthbreeze.com virgin that's earthbreeze.com virgin for up to 40% off plus free gifts on your first order. Hey, JJ here. Can you believe how fast the holidays are knocking at the door this year? One minute it's pumpkin spice season, the next you're getting your guest room ready and wondering where their wrapping paper went. And that's when I turned to Wayfair. From bedding and towels to holiday decor and last minute stocking stuffers, Wayfair has everything you need to get your home and holidays together fast. And for way less. With Wayfair, I know I can refresh my guest room in no time. Maybe I'll add a soft new comforter or a few holiday throw pillows. With Wayfair, it's so easy and everything arrives super fast. Plus, there's free shipping for any order over $35 easy and total peace of mind. So whether you're hosting, gifting, or just adding those final festive touches, Wayfair has your back. And when the holidays wind down, Wayfair has everything you need to tuck it all neatly away. Smart storage solutions for every room from the kitchen to the closet. Get organized, refreshed and ready for the holidays. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. Wayfair. Every style, every home that's W A Y f a I r.com Ray Ban.

Meta glasses come with open ear audio so you can listen to your favorite music without blocking out the world around you.

Hey Meta, Play Gorgeous.

Here's Gorgeous by Doja Cat.

You can also ask Meta AI questions.

Hey Meta, when's Doja Cat's next concert?

Doja Cat is playing at the Los Angeles Theater next Tuesday.

Sweet Ray Ban Meta Glasses available at Ray Ban stores and other authorized retailers.

I'm JJ Virgin, PhD dropout. Sorry, mom turned four time New York Times bestselling author. Yes, I'm a Certified Nutrition Specialist, Fitness hall of Famer, and I speak at health conferences and trainings around the globe. But I'm driven by my insatiable curiosity and love of science to keep asking questions, digging for answers, and sharing the information that I uncover with as many people as I can. And that's why I created the well Beyond 40 podcast to synthesize and simplify the science of health into actionable strategies to help you thrive. In each episode, we'll talk about what's working in the world of wellness, from personalized nutrition and healing your metabolism to to healthy aging and prescriptive fitness. Join me on the journey to better health so you can love how you look and feel right now and have the energy to play full out at 100. Hey jj, Virgin here.

Okay, real talk.

So often the holidays sneak up on me. Travel, gifts, hosting, you know, all the things and suddenly it's like, wait, who spent what and where? And I know I'm not the only one who's looked at a bill in January and thought, wow, that escalated quickly. If you want to keep your finances under control this holiday season, you need to be using Monarch. It's rated the Wall Street Journal's best budgeting app of 2025. Monarch is the all in one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean interface. On your laptop or on your phone. Monarch lets you link everything and gives you real time visibility so you're not shocked later. Right now, I've been checking the holiday spending category so I don't accidentally start the new year with that dreaded debt hangover. And honestly, just seeing everything laid out is already helping me stay more aware. This season, Monarch does the heavy lifting. It links your accounts in minutes, gives you smart categorization and super clear visuals. Yes, that end of year reset could be a real goal. This time. Don't let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use the code virginonarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com with the code Virgin.

The holidays are all about family. But at the Chrysler Wrap of the Year sales event, it's all about you. Enjoy every mile in the most awarded minivan in America, the Chrysler Pacifica. With the most standard safety features in its class, available Stow n Go seating and the available Stow and back built in vacuum. Make the most of the holidays with a great deal at the Chrysler Pacifica Wrap up the Year sales event based on Ward's small van segment. Based upon the latest available competitor information, Chrysler is a registered trademark of FCA US llc.

So I still remember in high school when the football players did a little spoof on the cheerleaders and they dressed up as them. I'm not sure if that would play well today, but then all I could think about was like, wow, look at their legs. I wish my legs look like that. That is so not fair. Because the deal was they were so lean and toned and defined. And so what I did with that information is I started working out in the boys gym doing weights, because back then there wasn't any weight training place for girls. So at 16, I was literally training with the bros, doing leg presses and squats. Now, back then, and sadly still today, my friends were afraid that lifting weights would make them bigger. But their reality is just the opposite. For us, women, muscle are metabolic Spanx. They literally hold everything in tighter while lighting a fat burning fire under your metabolism. Now, over the years, I've refined my leg workout to get even better results. And the great news is you don't have to go to the gym to do these. And some of these will probably surprise you. So before I get into the actual exercises, it's coming. I want you to understand your anatomy first. So let's talk first about your thighs. You have your quad. So we have your rectus femoris, one muscle of the four quads. And then we have three of the vastus group. And the vastus group, we have a middle and one on either side. So that's the first part of it. And then we have adductors through the inner thighs. The way you remember is this add, pull it together and abductors on the outer thighs, push it out. Okay, so that's the thighs. Then we have our legs, we have our calves. And we have two calf muscles, the gastrocnemius and the soleus. Now the soleus works and it's our type one slow twitchy fiber. It works when your knees are. If you bend your knees, you flex them up. That's just Your soleus, your gastroc does all sorts of stuff. It can help you jump. So it's extending, it's extending the thigh. It's a lot of explosive, fast twitch movement. You also have your anterior tibialis down the front of your legs, but we don't really work much on those. So calf muscles then back your legs. We have your hamstrings that help flex your knee and also extend your hip. And then of course, we have your glutes, the big one, you've heard of the glute maximus. And then the medius works with the abduction and rotating out. Okay, had to get that out of the way. Let's now get them working. And it's going to start with the way that you can do a squat. So you never sacrifice form to go heavier because that's how you get injured. And as you're first starting, you want to make sure that you're really focusing on form. A basic squat is going to be where your, your knees are going to go over your toes, you're going to keep your chest up. So a great way to start with a squat is to put your hands up here to keep lifting up your elbows or bring your arms all the way up. But when you're sitting down, you want to sit back as if you're sitting into a chair, Right? So notice I'm not tipping forward, I'm not lifting up my heels, because we want that ankle mobility here too. And then you're going to come back up again. Ideally, you're coming down so that your hips are level with your knees and you're taking your thighs parallel to the ground. So that's just a simple way to start with it. Again, I can do it with my hands here, I can do it with my hands here. I'm not using any weight to start. And when I teach someone to do this, we start with no weight to begin with. And if you're uncomfortable with it, one of the things that you can do is use a trx. The different ways that you can hold weights here, you can have a barbell across the front that you would put right here. You can have a barbell across your back, you can put on your back, you can hold a dumbbell. This is called a goblet squat. Or you can just hold two dumbbells and do this. And again, these dumbbells could also just go on your shoulders. So there are a variety of different ways that you can do this. And again, the most important thing is you're doing it with good form. Now, if you are coming out of an injury or you need some extra support, I'm going to show you two ways you can modify this. The first one is a ball wall squat. Now, what I've done here, I've got a ball, I'm putting it into the small of my back. I've got my feet shoulder width apart and slightly in front of me to take some of the pressure off my back. I'm leaning back against the ball. If you hit the ball, I fall back against the wall and then I'm just going to come down to a right angle and come back up again. So this can be a great way to start if you are just getting used to this or you're coming out of a back injury. And as you get stronger here, you can use some free weights. So here's another thing you can use is just a TRX if you're just getting comfortable with the movement. And I'll tell you what, what I do here, you can see my pinkies. Like, I'm not grabbing onto this. When you start, you can grab onto it and then you can just loosen up and come back a little further. So you're just using it for assistance so you can really work on your form. I also been using this to get full range, to get down a little bit lower, because in lice you gotta be able to get up off the floor. But this is a great way to start to learn squats and not put yourself at risk. So we talked squats and again you see how you can continue to improve those. The next one are lunges. I still remember the first time I was taken to the gym by a bodybuilder and he had me do lunges and I couldn't walk for a week. So note to you start these out easy. And there are some variations that can make it more simple for you if you do have a knee injury. But again, if you have any kind of injury, I would tell you, grab yourself a highly qualified personal trainer or physical therapist to help design that workout for you and what modifications you might need to do. However, having blown out my knee at 17, it was exercise that allowed me to keep going for all the years that I did without having to have a knee replacement till 52. So this really, really matters. So the simplest one to think about is, is just a single leg type of lunge. You can do this, of course, with dumbbells, you can do this with a barbell. Now, modification of this is to step out and to not move. It's just to go down and up, which then, of course, also involves balance. And the important thing with this is that you are driving down with your back thigh, and where you'll really feel this. Besides, the balance piece of it is in both your quads and glutes. So that's another way that you can modify it. The other thing that you can do is you can use a TRX here, and you can use a TRX to just do a single leg type of lunge, or even down here, using it to help you balance going up and down. So that's another way to use a trx. The next thing you can do for a trx, if you're just again, working on balance to start, is you can just use it to help you so that you make sure you don't go flying. Again, this is just to kind of help you get confidence to start. And then the other thing that you can do with lunges is you can do walking lunges. So I'd step and come together and step and come together. So lots of variations here, and variations are important because that's going to help you continue to change things up and progress. Besides a forward lunge or a backward lunge, you can also do a side lunge. Now, I'm going to show you two things that are going to help also work your adductors, abductors. And one of those are side lunges. The important thing here is knees are following toes. And so this would be a side lunge that has to work my add and abductors. So side lunge. You can also use this holding onto a trx. And you can also, of course, put dumbbells here or use a barbell on your back. So there it is. I do one side, and then I go to the other. Now, another thing that you can do to work your quads and glutes, but also to work those adductors, is a plie. And in yoga, this is called a goddess squat. So this would be a plie, big for your inner and outer thighs. And I'm gonna show you how to hit that even more. And what you can do here is hold dumbbells right here, or again, barbell on your back. But what I'll do is I'll come down here. I'll just stay here, very unpleasant, and pull back a little bit. And that little micro movement is gonna work my add and abductors a little bit more. So that is a plie. The final thing that you can do for your quads, your glutes, your calves, is a step up now this is an 18 inch step bench, maybe a 20 inch, I'm not sure. The important thing is for your step bench is that it's stable and that you do not break a right angle at your knee and your hip. So for me, at six feet tall, I can do this high of a bench. It might be better for you to be at a 12 inch or an 18 inch. And what you're going to do with it is you're going to step up, tap, step down, tap. What you're noticing here is that I'm staying on my left leg the whole time until it gets fatigued. The other thing you can do is up and lift a leg. So that's another option to make it harder. And same thing here, you can hold dumbbells. So super easy to do, very functional. In life, we have to step up on things. So this is another one. And also incorporates some balance. So this is fantastic. Now we're going to talk hamstrings. And you know, I would pick one of these if you got more time. You can do two. And the big things that are going to work these are hip hinges and deadlifts. I'm going to show you a couple different ways you can do this. One thing that I've always loved is something called a stiff leg deadlift. You'll see people deadlifting and they come down, they bend their knees and then they come up. Then there's another way to do a deadlift where your knees just stay slightly bent the whole time so they're not locked out, but they're not real bent. And what you do is you keep weights and you run them down the front of your body to only as far as you can, keeping your back extended. So if I went any further, I'd have to do this. So I can only go to here. My legs stay pretty extended and then I stand up and my glutes and hamstrings are pulling me up. And then right here in my hands, I'm holding either a barbell or free weights. The next thing that you can do for hamstrings is something called hip hinging. The important thing with hip hinging is that you are focused on a right.

Angle at your knee.

You're going to drop your hips down and then you lift your hips up as high as you can, fully extend. I like to do this with a slight turnout of my feet, with my knees following my feet so I can work more of my gluteus medius as well. And I'm dropping down and again coming up so big glute hamstring exercise here. And the way you can make this harder is to throw a barbell right here or hold a dumbbell right here. And that's how you can increase the intensity of this. But you really want to get up here and squeeze. Now, there's another way you can do this using the ball, and there's a multitude of ways you can make this harder for yourself. And what's cool here is you can see how you can have an exercise ball at home and do a variety of easy exercises. Now, the first way you can do this is the easiest way, and that is just putting your feet on the ball and lifting your hips up. However, if you really want to pull in your hamstrings and glutes, this makes it a lot harder. And that is coming all the way to a bent knee and down. So this is my preferred way to do this. Once you get really strong, the way you can continue to challenge yourself with this is to have one leg come up and you do a single leg. And you can see how you can continue to progress by putting more body weight over it simply by bringing a leg up. How to use a little power to do one more type of squat. And when you do this, you use about 40% of the weight you would do when you're regularly weight training. But this is another way that we can do a squat and throw in a little bit of explosive power, too. Now, you can include these exercises in your resistance training plan, but if you're watching all this and go. I have no clue where to start. Jj, I gotcha. I created an eight week plan for women that you can download for free@jjvirgin.com power and basically it's a free guide with my favorite home gym essentials, a quick start workout plan and handy progress tracker so you can watch all of the amazing changes that go through your body, like getting stronger and getting more defined over time. Okay, now, of course, part of this, you want to get stronger, you want to get fitter, and you want to get leaner too. So check out the next video on how to get leaner and drop some body fat fast.

Be sure to join me next time.

For more tools, tips and techniques you.

Can incorporate into everyday life to ensure you look and feel great and more importantly, that you're built to last. And check me out on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and my website, JJ virgin.com and make sure to follow my podcast so you don't miss a single episode@subscribetoj.com See you next time.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a froth page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website what Should I read next podcast.com to find out more.