Recently I wrote a post with 4 home full body exercises that I like doing as part of my home workouts. I didn’t expect it to be so popular but I’ve gotten a number of emails asking me to share with you some more upper and lower body exercises. I guess that, like me, you like intense exercises that help you do a short workout.
So, in this post I share with you 4 additional exercises that I love doing. These go great with the full body exercises from the previous post. Here they are:
Squat and Press
One of the best upper body – lower body exercises, the squat and shoulder press takes two exercises which are already hard to begin with and fuses them together for one explosive combination.
You start the exercise by holding a dumbbell in each hand at shoulder level with your arms bent. You bend your knees and go into a squat. You rise back to an upright position and press both dumbbells up above your head.
A few tips for this exercise: as with any squat, push your buttocks backward as you bend your knees and don’t allow your knees to tilt forward pass your toes. Push up through your heels.
For the press part of the exercise, the movement needs to come from the arms and shoulders, not the back. Keep your back straight and work with weights that you can actually lift with your arms and shoulders alone.
Squat and Diagonal Swing
This is a great exercise which I love doing as it involves big movements throughout. This exercise works the quadriceps, buttocks, arms and shoulder muscles.
To do this exercise, you hold a dumbbell in one hand, placing the other on your thigh. Bend both knees and go into a squat while holding the dumbbell in front of the opposite leg (as you see in the picture).
As you rise from the squat, swing the dumbbell in a diagonal line to the side of your body to shoulder height or a bit over. Follow the movement with your eyes. Hold this position for a second and go back into a squat for another repetition. Make sure to work both sides equally.
Side Squat With Dumbbell
Here is another exercise to include in your full body workout. This one applies a static stimulation to the shoulders. The lower body stimulation comes from the squat. As you can see, the squat is the base of nearly all of these exercises.
The way you perform the side step with squat is as follows: Stand with a dumbbell in both hands. Your arms should be bent and the dumbbell in front of your torso. Take a big step to the side and go into a squat. This is going to be a wide squat as the distance between your feet will be big. This will place more tension on your inner thighs.
The dumbbell shouldn’t move, you hold it steady. Rise from the squat and bring the other leg toward the first to stand with both legs close together. Now take a step to the other side and repeat the squat. If you do this exercise quickly you can build up a good cardio stimulation as well as a strength one.
Squat and Front Dumbbell Raise
This is the hardest exercise of the 4 I outlined in this post. It requires stability, strength, technique, and endurance in your lower and upper body.
You begin the squat and front dumbbell raise by standing upright with a dumbbell in each hand. As you can see in the picture above, you hold the dumbbells slightly in front of you with an overhand grip.
In one motion, you descend into a squat while raising both dumbbells with straight arms to the height of your shoulders. Hold this position for a second and feel the strain in your quadriceps and shoulders. Return to the starting position.
A few tips: You have to do a deep enough squat to actually feel the tension in your legs. If you find that you can’t do a deep squat, you need smaller weights. You don’t have to swing the dumbbells above your shoulder height. This exercise can also be done with one dumbbell held in both hands. It is a great way to get used to the exercise and to build strength.
Final Words
I love exercises which work the lower and upper body together. The more muscles you use the harder your workout generally is. I hope that you will find these exercises effective and challenging as I do. I like choosing a few of these exercises during each of my home workouts. If you have any questions, leave me a comment below.
