Fit Body by Julia: Deadweight Legs

When I saw the title of this workout, I was anticipating a lower body workout. This is much more than that. This is actually a total body strength workout with a heavy lower body focus–and as the title suggests, a lot of deadlifts. But you do work all of your major upper body muscle groups nicely. Another excellent and intense workout from Fit Body by Julia. The workout was created by Kristin and of course performed by Julia. As I am finding with many of Julia’s workouts, you can cut these down if you need to. The length of this one is good (56 minutes) but for me to include a warm up and stretch, I need it to be a little shorter–at least on a work day. Today is part of my Staycation so I did a warm up and stretch, plus I followed this with Julia’s Back & Lat Burst–so my workout was super long this morning. But on a normal morning when I only have an hour, I will just skip the two tabatas at the end (or maybe just the final tabata since I really like the first one) to accommodate warm up and stretch time. If you only do the super sets and deadlifts that is 42:30 minutes. If you also do the first tabata that is 49 minutes. So yeah, in the future, when I do this on a work day I will do it through to the first tabata; that will give me 11 minutes for a warm up and stretch.

The structure of Deadweight Legs is 5 super sets. Each super set is an upper body exercise and a lower body exercise. The super sets are done for 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest and are repeated 3 times. In between each superset is a deadlift variation. You do a total of 20 reps. If it is a deadlift that focuses on both legs at the same time, you will do two different types of deadlifts. If it is a one leg deadlift variety you will just do 10 reps on each leg.

The tabatas at the end are very challenging–especially the final one. You are doing those for 20 seconds of work and 5 seconds of rest so it was hard for me to get a lot of reps in but it was still hard work, especially the final exercise in Tabata #2 (Alt Bulg knee tuck/clap under to elv pushup)–I was working hard just to do a Bulgarian knee tuck/clap on each leg in the 20 seconds allotted.

Deadweight Legs is 56 minutes long; no warm up or stretch, and no music. Equipment: dumbbells, a high step (I had mine at 14 inches through the supersets but lowered it to 12 inches for the tabatas) and I also used my weight bench. Julia used a sand bag, a stability ball and her plyo box at 16 inches. The breakdown below was copied from Julia’s YouTube page. I only made some formatting adjustments and explained any exercise that isn’t obvious from the name. The weights listed below are what I used.

Superset 1: 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest, repeated 3x

1. Front Load Squat (20# DBs)
2. Arnold Press (15# DBs)

10 Suitcase Deadlifts + 10 Romanian Deadlifts (30# DBs)

Superset 2: 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest, repeated 3x

1. Plie Squat w/ heel raise (one 30# DB)
2. Zottman Curl (15# DBs)

10 single leg deadlifts (20# DBs)

Superset 3: 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest, repeated 3x

1. Side to Side Squat with Lateral Leg Raise (20# DBs)
2. Alt Reverse Lunge + Tricep Kickbacks (12# DBs)

10 Staggered Stance deadlift (20# DBs)

Superset 4: 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest, repeated 3x

1. Weighted Chair Lunges (a quick alternating jump lunge off top of high step) (one 15# DB)
2. Alternating bent over rows (piston rows) (15# DBs)

10 Sumo deadlift (25# DBs) / 10 Straight Leg deadlift (30# DBs)

Superset 5: 50 seconds of work and 10 seconds of rest, repeated 3x

1. Hip Thrusts on ball or elevation (Julia had her back on a stability ball and her feet on her platform, I placed my back on my weight bench, feet on floor and a 25# DB on my hips)
2. Plyo Pushups + Toe Touches

10 Alt Windmill deadlift (10 per side) (20# DBs)

Tabata #1: 20 seconds of work, 5 seconds of rest, repeated 4x

1. Weighted 180 squat jumps (one 15# DB)
2. Pendulum Plank Leg hops x 4 + Pike Pushup
3. Gladiator get up (1/2 Turkish get up into t-stand leg lift) (one 10# DB)

Tabata #2: 20 seconds of work, 5 seconds of rest, repeated 4x

1. Single leg lat box jump to pistol squat
2. Single leg lat box jump to pistol squat (other leg)
3. Alt Bulg knee tuck/clap under to elv pushups (with back leg on step, do a lunge w/ a jump clapping hands under front leg then bring leg back to step (so both feet are on step) and do a push up)

For more info on Fit Body by Julia and other (free) streaming workouts I’ve sampled and reviewed, check out my Streaming page.