back of thigh help

[nicky2038]

hi does anyone know the best workout for the back of the thigh area from your butt down to the back of your knee. i need a low impact, i have bad knees and it is painfull to do lunges or sqauts.

[MandyBee23]

I can give you some work out ideas, but if it was me I'd want to see how it's done because I am a visual person, so you might want to do a search online. There are plenty of websites that will show you how to do a certain exercise for women that shows pictures, just search “butt exercises for women” or something. A great exercise I do is seated squats, but I use the machine that has a little resistance and helps you to keep your back straight because I too have a bad knee. All you do is put the bar on the back of your shoulders put your feet in font of you at a diagonal and sit and a 90 degree angle. You can also do dead lifts by taking the bar and stand with your heels on a long piece of wood, with the bar hanging from your arms use it too bend over bringing it to your feet but bend your knees a little and stick out your butt and arch your back, then return to starting position. I also do kick backs and lunges - which you can do with dumb bells. Working on legs can be very tiring especially if you are using a good amount of weight, I was at the gym yesterday for 2 ½ hours just doing legs, and my butt cheeks are killing me!

[MandyBee23]

it is painfull to do lunges or sqauts.

Sorry didn't read that part. I hurt my knee bad from running a couple of years ago. Do you do cardio at all? After I hurt my knee I started using the elliptical machine and it didn't take long to strengthen my knee back, I still have a hard time doing the stair stepper but its much better than what it was.

[stroutman81]

What do you hope to get out of these exercises you're looking for?

Resistance training will elicit a response from your muscle to either grow or not. It's not going to do much in terms of 'spot reducing' the fat you have on particular areas of your body though.

I just want to make sure you have your head around why you want to find exercises for this area?

That said, fantastic exercises for your glutes and hamstrings include:

Romanian Deadlifts
Glute Bridges
SHELCs
Glute Ham Raises
Rack Pulls

I could go on, but I think the first part of this post is more important for starters.