Sculpt and tone your lower body with this 30-minute no-equipment strength workout

If you're looking to work on your lower body and start developing strength in key areas such as your glutes and legs, you might be thinking this requires weights and the gym. However, that is just one way of doing it; you can tone and strengthen your lower body at home using this 30 minute no-equipment workout.

This workout will take you through a large range of strength-based exercises including some of the best leg workouts and various moves from our list of the best glute exercises. The routine has no cardio involved and is suitable for all fitness levels. If you do fancy upping the intensity, feel free to add in a pair of adjustable dumbbells to this lower body session.

This workout comes from Courtney Andersen, a certified fitness instructor who regularly posts home-friendly workouts on her YouTube channel. She demonstrates every exercise herself in the video, so you can ensure that your form is down to a tee as you follow along. There are a lot of exercises to get through but you will only spend 30 seconds on and ten seconds off for each move.

The half an hour circuit is great if you are short on time but remember you can always pause the video for breaks if you need a longer break in between exercises, or need to grab a sip of water from one of the best water bottles for the gym. 

Watch Courtney Anderson's 30-Minute Lower Body Workout

Just because this workout doesn't involve any extra weight doesn't mean that you won't build strength. You will be engaging muscles in your quads, hamstrings, calves and glutes as you work through the various exercises.

Using your own body weight as a force of resistance during exercises will improve your muscle strength, as research published in the Journal of Exercise Science & Fitness found, stating bodyweight training can be as effective as weight training in some cases. The small study discovered that eight weeks of push-up training achieved similar muscle gain results as low load bench press training did amongst a group of young males.

This style of bodyweight workout like the one designed by Anderson is good for anyone just getting into strength training. Not only does it teach you key exercises to engage your lower body muscle but it can be completed anywhere without any worry of finding the right equipment or trying to work out how to set it up.

The more often you complete bodyweight workouts like this and establish a good diet to support your strength building (such as establishing which foods build muscle) then you might find yourself feeling more ready to try lifting some additional weight. This might mean moving on to working with some of the best resistance bands, or you might like to learn how to deadlift properly with a barbell.