What I did at the gym

I woke up from my afternoon nap with a soreness in my backside. I can't figure out which exercise I did caused it, exactly, since I didn't feel like my butt was targeted at all during my lower-body exercise training this morning. If anyone is looking for exercises that target your butt, though, these might be a good place to start.

Of course, you can always start with lunges and squats, which are kind of typical lower-body training exercises. You can also do them while holding weights. But that's not what I did this morning. I started with something I've never done before--don't even know it's name. But let's call it a one-leg toe-tap.

One-Leg Toe-Tap
Standing on one foot, and holding a small lightweight ball (~5in diameter) in the opposite hand, raise the ball while standing upright, and then bend over tapping the ball to the toe. Do this 15 times, and then switch to the other foot and do 15 reps.

Cable Kickback
The next exercise I did was a kind of kickback. An ankle is attached to a cable with weights, and pulling the ankle upwards towards the butt (that is, instead of swinging the leg at the hip, just bend at the knee) lifts the weights. I did 12-15 reps, then switched legs.

Then I went back to the One-Leg Toe-Tap, and repeated the Cable Kickback. Then I stepped onto a weight bench for 1 minute. That was not fun.

Lunges
Okay, I guess I did do lunges, but with a twist. The cable was attached again to my ankle, and then I pulled the leg with the cable back into a lunge. I did 10-12 of these on each leg.

Calf Raises
A calf raise is standing on a low bench with the heels hanging over the edge, and basically raising up (by "crunching" the calves). I did 25 of these.

Then I repeated these three again--1 minute of stepping onto the weight bench, the lunges, and the calf raises. I also sat down for a minute or two in there, because the stepping onto the bench part just winded me something crazy.

I'm thinking it was probably the toe-tap that did it, but I guess it's hard to be sure.

What else did I do at the gym today? I did a warm-up on the treadmill for 10 minutes or so before the weight training, and then I did about 25 minutes of cardio also on the treadmill.