New leg exercise?

It's probably not, but I don't remember seeing it before so I might have made it up!

It consists of kneeling down in front of a wall (shins parallel with floor) and giving yourself a push backwards using the wall, keeping your back dead straight and bending only at the knees, only to stop yourself with your shins/feet on the floor, returning to the wall and repeating. It's a killer exercise for the quadriceps, but I can't imagine it being too good for the knees if over used.

Anyone seen this elsewhere? Has it got a name?

 

How do you mean? Does this exercise exist already? What does the fitball do?

Maybe my subconscious had seen this exercise before, but I came up with it as an alternative to squats & one legged squats to mix things up a bit. It targets the knees, too, mine of which are a bit skinny, and of course you have to keep your body dead straight.

 

Thanks for elaborating.

 

Thanks anyway, but it's not a wall sit. I do plenty of those. The exercise I'm talking about, well, I'll put it in bullet points:

- kneel down facing a wall

- shins should be parallel to the floor

- keeping your body straight from the knees up, lean back

- you should be bending only at the knees

- go down as far as you can, then, using only the power of your quadriceps, push yourself back up quickly

- the wall is really there just to steady yourself (or add resistance with a light push)

So really, you're transforming from a right angle to an acute angle, and back up to a right angle.

 

It's not the same as a squat at all. Think of it more as a leg extension from a different position.

I feel it targeting my knees more than squats (rather than upper/outer thighs), definitely, but there's not as much lower back involved and probably not as much arse action.

It's not a stretch, well, it may stretch the muscles, but potentially extreme strength would be needed to raise yourself depending on how far down you went. You can lift your arms in the air to add resistance, too. Re-read the bullet points incase you misunderstood, try it out and get back to me. For me, it seems like it may be too much for the knees to do too regularly, but then maybe it's similar to the sternum pains when you first start doing dips.

By the way, these aren't a replacement for squats. I'm trying to come up with a range of bodyweight leg exercises.

 

If you follow the steps it shouldn't be too hard. You'll be on your knees in an L shape.

|L <-- like that (that's you on your knees, facing the wall)

Your knees stay where they are, shins on the floor, but you bend at the knees as you lower your body (backwards, away from the wall), keeping everything straight except the knees. Using the power of your quadriceps you'll raise yourself back up after going as low as you can.

It took me a bit of getting used to but I did a few sets today and felt the strain (able to make them more explosive now), however as I said, I'm not sure how good it'd be for your joints in the long term as it seems to isolate them a bit.

This probably exists already and has a name, wish I knew where to find it.

 

What a saviour, nice one :good

That's it, perfect. Gets a lot harder the further down you go, or if you raise your arms above your head (and keep them in line with your body as you go back).

 

Barely any resistance, really? How far did you go down? Kills my legs. Are you sure you're doing it right? Because even going all the way down (back nearly parallel to floor) it wouldn't really stretch your quadriceps that much.

Might be to do with the fact I'm just built long, when I put my hands above my head I've got ****ing loads to work against