Cable-Only Leg Day: 5 Glute and Hamstring Exercises Rated

Nikkiey: For today's workout, I'm trying five cable exercises. Make sure you stay until the end of the video, because I'm going to rate each individual exercise on its effectiveness and whether I would ever place it inside of a WarriorBabe program. Let's go.

This first exercise, we're going to do an elevated cable pull through squat. Four sets, 10 reps.

That's hard. Definitely a unique setup. Talk about a different kind of mind-to-muscle engagement and burn. That was felt. I'm going to go a little bit heavier next time.

Talk about also keeping proper balance with that, because you've got the weight pulling from the back and then you've got to try and keep the balance on the legs. It may be a leg day, but it feels like a full body workout.

This next one is still elevated as well. I've never done this elevated concept with these types of exercises. We're going to do four sets of 10 reps with an elevated cable pull through RDL. Let's test it out.

Talk about a hamstring stretch. The elevation totally makes that more effective. Okay, not too bad. I'm going to increase my weight though, because I felt that was too light.

I'm not feeling the burn as much as I would normally feel if I was doing a WarriorBabe workout, and the mental challenge of the weight aspect maybe gets more challenging. Maybe this is just more mental, and connecting to the form, I don't know. I prefer to push heavy weight. This isn't really allowing me to push heavy weight. I prefer to get on a leg press, under a barbell, pull some deadlifts, so there's that.

Because I'm not feeling super challenged here, I would go and do a barbell hip thrust. This is working your glutes and your hamstrings, so I can get underneath a barbell on my waist, and I could push more weight with a barbell hip thrust than I'm able to push here.

Next up, we've got a cable sumo front squat.

I personally like that better than a barbell. It's easier to hold than a full barbell, and a lot of people complain about the barbell causing pain on their shoulder blades or their shoulders, or it's uncomfortable here. So that's a good modification. Let's increase the weight. Go big or go home. 100 pounds seems so light on a cable machine in comparison to a barbell.

Yeah, not bad. I'm definitely feeling it now. Definitely got a little bit of a pump going. Moving on.

All right, before we get to the next exercise, I just want to interrupt this workout. Make sure to like, comment and subscribe. If you're interested in the WarriorBabe VIP program, check out the links in the description below. Let's get back to it.

All right, changing it back out. Next up we've got a quarter donkey kick, or you can call it a partial donkey kick, and we're going to do four sets of 10 reps on each leg. I've never done it in this stance before. I'm going to get down on my knees and then kick back. Usually I do kickbacks like this, and I would think that a half kickback would just be right here and kicking back. No way. This is sad.

Okay, so this is how I would do it. Standing. That's definitely hard. The first few exercises were just like warming up and more of the isolation work. I feel like this is more challenging because the muscle is consistently under tension the entire time. And it just seems like the workout's getting harder, which makes sense. Let's see what the last exercise is.

This last exercise is going to be a cable pull through with a rope. I'm going to change out the attachments, and we're going to do four sets, 10 reps.

That's a wrap. That concludes leg day, or what I would call a hamstring and glute day.

Let's start off with rating the first exercise, which was the elevated cable pull through squat. In my opinion, I would rate that a 4 out of 10. I would rather get myself underneath a barbell and just do a normal squat.

The second exercise was the elevated cable pull through RDL. I would rate this one a 4 out of 10 as well. I would rather just have a barbell in my hand and do a normal RDL.

The third exercise was the cable sumo front squat. I would rate this one a solid 9 out of 10. That was a solid exercise. I would love to use that in place of a barbell front squat because of the comfort, compared to the bar sitting on the shoulders.

The fourth exercise was the half partial rep donkey kickbacks. I modified it to a standing position rather than a kneeling position. I would rate that one a solid 8 out of 10, because when you get the form right and modify to the standing position, in my opinion you can feel that resistance on the muscle really well.

The last exercise was the rope cable pull through. Honestly, I would rather just get underneath a barbell and do a barbell hip thrust for this one. I just kind of felt like I was going through the motions. In my opinion, I would rate that a 4 out of 10.

But all in all, that was fun, trying something new. I love expanding my mind into other exercises and other workout styles. If you want a workout put together for you, but also so much more when it comes to your entire fitness journey, check out warriorbabe.com. The link is in the description below.