Most cardio exercise equipment works your lower-body muscles, including your calves, quads, hamstrings and glutes. But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, you should also strength-train these and other major muscle groups at least twice a week. You'll encounter some specialized gym and home-gym equipment for toning your lower-body muscles, and can also adapt more general equipment to the same use.
Leg Press
One of the best machines for a beginner to start with, the leg press works all your major leg muscles, except your calves, at once. Just sit down in the machine, place both feet flat on the platform and push it away from you. Paying attention to proper technique will help keep you safe during this exercise. Your knees and toes should both point in the same direction, and never bend your knees sharper than 90 degrees.
Calf Raise Machine
Your calf muscles only work when you raise your heels off the ground. You can add a calf workout to any leg press by pointing your toes at the end of the movement, or you can isolate your calves with a calf raise machine. You'll encounter three main types of calf raise machines: Standing, bent-over and seated. In all three types you work your calves by shifting onto your toes so your heels come off the ground. In the standing machine, you stand beneath a padded shoulder yoke. With a bent-over machine, the padded weight lever rests over your hips. And in a seated machine, which focuses on the smaller of your two calf muscles, the padded lever rests on top of your knees.
Leg Curl/Extension
In a gym, the leg curl and leg extension machines are usually separate. But the two are often combined into a single dual-action leg lever for home gyms. The basic principle remains the same. To do leg curls, which isolate your hamstrings, you either stand -- or for a home gym -- or sit or lie -- for regular gym equipment -- and flex your heel toward your buttocks. A padded bar behind your ankle provides resistance. To isolate your quads with leg extensions, you sit in the machine, ankles tucked behind the padded bar, and straighten your legs against the machine's resistance.
Free Weights
Using free weights to work your legs might seem counterintuitive. After all, you can't hold dumbbells with your toes. But free weights like dumbbells and barbells add extra difficulty to what would otherwise be bodyweight leg exercises. Hold barbells in front of or behind your shoulders, or a dumbbell in each hand, during squats, lunges or leg dips. You can also hold a single large dumbbell in both hands, hanging down between your legs, while doing squats.
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