How to Strengthen Your Legs Without Weights

While weights are the most common way of adding muscle to your body, they are not always the preferred way for many people. Strengthening leg muscles, as well as other muscles of the body, can be done using just your body weight and the right moves if you know how to engage the muscles correctly. Various workout routines allow you to add strength and size without ever lifting a dumbbell or hitting a gym machine.

• 1

  Increase the repetitions of your nonweighted exercises to engage the muscles and increase strength. For example, instead of doing 15 weighted lunges, perform 60 to 80 nonweighted lunges. To perform a nonweighted lunge, start with your feet hip-width apart, hands on your hips. Step forward with your right leg, making sure to keep your knee over your ankle. Bend the front knee so your body is lowered straight down slightly and then stand up straight again. Return this leg to the starting position and switch legs.

• 2

  Create isometric tension during your workouts by flexing hard and holding the flex. Whatever the workout is, flex your muscles as hard as you can during the highest tension part of the exercise, and engage in what is called an isometric hold by holding that flex. For example, for your nonweighted lunge, when your legs are bent, squeeze your quadriceps muscle (the muscle on the front of the thigh) as hard as you can before returning to the starting position.

• 3

  Reduce rest between your sets. Limiting your rest period keeps your muscles burning fat and growing. Leave only 10 to 15 seconds between sets of the same exercise and 30 to 40 seconds between different exercises.

• 4

  Use one limb during your workouts to increase the body weight on that muscle and make the workout harder and more effective. For example, when doing push-ups, place one leg on top of the other so only one foot is on the ground. Perform these push-ups until you're fatigued.

• 5

  Do your repetitions in slow motion to increase the range of tension on the entire muscle and to hold the tension there longer. This will force your muscle to work harder. For example, if it usually takes you 8 seconds to do one lunge, hold the lunge for a few more seconds before returning to the starting position.