20 Minute Dumbbell Lower Body Circuits Workout is a short but tough lower body strength workout from Caroline Girvan. The rest/recoveries are shorter in this one, so it moves fast and gets pretty metabolic. However, Caroline doesn’t actually do the exercises quickly. You take your time when performing the exercise, doing them in a slow and controlled manner, but you do not get much rest between the exercises. I paired this workout with Caroline’s 20 Minute Hard Upper Body Workout with Dumbbells this morning for a thorough total body strength workout that wore me out! The stretches are short at the end of both workouts so I also added a longer total body stretch.
All of the exercises in this workout are done interval style: each exercise is done for 45 seconds of work followed by 15 seconds of rest. There is a timer in the upper left hand side of the screen counting down your intervals and recoveries. However, the recovery timer disappears at the beginning of the second circuit and never returns. During the recovery Caroline previews the next exercise. There is also a little bar at the bottom of the screen that counts down the entire workout time as a percentage.
20 Minute Dumbbell Lower Body Circuits Workout is 25:04 minutes; 1:25 minute intro, no warm up and 1:45 minute stretch. Equipment: dumbbells, yoga block and fitness mat. Caroline is using 10kg/22 pounds dumbbells. The weights listed below are what I used.
- Elevated squat (heels are elevated on yoga block and DBs are at shoulders) (27.5# DBs)
- RDL (Romanian deadlift) (40# DBs)
- Static lunge (stationary lunge w/ front foot on yoga block) (20# DBs)
- Repeat #3 on other leg
- 1/2 rep heel elevated squats (bodyweight) (heels are elevated on yoga block, lower to bottom of squat but only raise halfway)
- 1/2 rep RDLs (lower to bottom of deadlift but only raise halfway) (30# DBs)
- Repeat #1-6 two more times
Finisher: (2:45 minutes, no rest/recoveries)
- Rear step lunge to squat for 45 seconds (one squat + one reverse lunge, hold one DB at same side shoulder as working leg) (one 27.5# DBs)
- Repeat #1 with no DB for 30 seconds
- Repeat #1 & 2 on other side of body
- 1/2 rep squats for 15 seconds (bodyweight, lower to bottom of squat but only raise halfway)
For more info on Caroline Girvan’s workouts and other (free) streaming workouts I’ve sampled and reviewed, check out my Streaming page.
