Cathe Live Review: Lean Lower Body (#33)

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Cathe Live Review: Lean Lower Body (#33)

Lean Lower Body is an excellent and fun strength workout focused on the lower body. This routine includes traditional weighted and non-weighted standing lower body exercises and ends with a tough lower body focused yoga series.

The workout starts with a mix of standing exercises, for the lower body, using dumbbells, gliding device and a resistance loop. There is one cardio interval, in this workout, where you do jacks, jogs, hops and pendulums, however, this is more to target the lower body muscles in different ways than it is to provide real cardio. The whole workout though is pretty metabolic, as you move quickly from one thing to the next and the nature of the exercises lends itself to providing a good cardio effect throughout.

The lower body strength moves are a nice mix of different exercises. They are not too high rep but if you are using the right weights, you will definitely start to feel the work. I also actually found some of the bodyweight exercises worked were more challenging too, particularly the forward / back lunges and the warrior lunges. Cathe used moderate weights and I increased on a few and would probably increase further, on the first series of exercises too, in future.

One thing to note, Cathe only uses one gliding device in this routine and switches it between the feet. Some of these changeovers are very fast so I just used two discs instead and then you don’t have to switch!

The workout ends with a tough series of yoga-type moves mainly in warrior lunge positions. You start in Warrior 2 before pivoting into a forward leaning lunge and then moving through a series of move, holding each pose for quite a long while before moving onto the next. I really found this series nicely challenging for my lower body and holding the deep lunges really started to get my legs shaking towards the end. This is such a nice change for Cathe and was an excellent way to fry the muscles a little more.

Overall, this is a fun and different lower body strength workout that ends with an excellent and challenging series of bodyweight exercises that will burn out those legs. This is definitely one I will return to often.

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The Workout

Lean Lower Body is a lower body strength workout consisting of standing weighted and non-weighted exercises and ends with a yoga series for the lower body.

What You Need to Know

(Rating scale – 1= lowest & 5 = highest).

The Moves

Lean Lower Body is 51 minutes long and originally aired on 8th January 2015 (#33). The workout starts with a fairly active 7 minute warm-up before moving into the first lower body strength move.

Standing Lower Body

• Squats – two 15# Dbs – 24 reps

• Stiff leg deadlift – two 15# Dbs – 10 reps

• Plie squats (putting down & picking up Dbs) – two 15# Dbs – 32 reps

• Wide stance deadlifts – two 15# Dbs – 10 reps

• Squats – two 15# Dbs – 24 reps

• Stiff leg deadlift – two 15# Dbs – 8 reps

• Plie squats (putting down & picking up Dbs) – two 15# Dbs – 24 reps

• Wide stance deadlifts – two 15# Dbs – 12 reps

• Jacks & jog in place / pendulums – resistance loop (around ankles) – 16, 24 & 16 jacks & 32 pendulums

• Static lunge - one 15# Db – 8x single, 1x 15 pulses, 4x 1.5’s, 8x singles, 2x 3.5’s & 4x singles (1st side). 12x singles, 1x 7 pulses, 8x singles, 4x 1.5’s, 4x singles, 2x 3.5’s & 4x singles (2nd side)

• Side lunges – Cathe used one gliding device (I used two) - 6 sets of 8 reps (changing side after each 8 reps)

• Reverse lunges - Cathe used one gliding device (I used two) - 6 sets of 8 reps (changing side after each 8 reps)

• Low riding forward/back lunges – 8x 4’s, 8x 2’s, 16x singles (1st side). 10x 4’s, 12x 2’s & 16x singles (2nd side)

• Lateral plie walks – two 10# Dbs (I used 12’s) – 10 sets (4 walks)

• Crossback lunges – one 15# Db – 4x 15 pulses, 4x 7 pulses & 4x 3 pulses

• Side steps (firewalkers) / diagonal walks (4 steps forward & 4 back on diagonal) – resistance loop (around ankles) – 8x side, 3x diagonal, 8x side, 3x diagonal & 8x side

• Corner to corner diagonal lunges (reaching Db to ankle at bottom of lunge) - one 10# Db – 10 sets each side

• Side lunges (putting down & picking up 1 Db; whilst holding the other) – two 10# Dbs & one gliding device – 16 reps each side

• Warrior lunges – one gliding device – 12 reps each side (2/2 count)

Bodyweight Yoga Series at 41 minutes

Starting in Warrior 2 (see photo at top of post); pivot turn into forward facing lunge, lean over the thigh reaching arms forward in front of you; raise arms up, keeping body in same position; open arms & clasp hands behind your back, drawing the hands down to the bottom; deepen the lunge & hold. Then take hands to floor & move into downward facing dog; pump alternating feet. Same working leg then steps through back into lunge & put hand on thigh; lift other arm overhead to the side. Then come up & go into reverse warrior w/ arm up & lifting back. Then come back into Warrior 2, then up on the toe & pivot turn into forward facing lunge, lean forward again w/ arms outstretched & hold; then bring just the arms up, open them to the side & clasp hands behind back, deepen the lunge again and hold.

Repeat entire series on other side

The workout ends with a 4 minute cool down and stretch using a mat.

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If you liked this workout, check out my review of Cathe Live: Totally Toned Legs (#56) – HERE.

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