Best Bodyweight Exercises for Quads — Top 10
Bodyweight training is training anywhere with no equipment. Here are the best bodyweight exercises for targeting your quads, ranked by effectiveness. Bodyweight training builds relative strength, body control, and joint resilience with zero equipment.
Ranked by quads muscle activation percentage, range of motion quality with bodyweight, and progressive overload potential.
The sissy squat isolates the quads by eliminating hip flexion. You lean back while bending at the knees, keeping your body in a straight line from knees to shoulders. Despite the name, it is an extremely difficult exercise.
Key Form Cue
Stand holding something for balance.
The pistol squat is a single-leg squat performed to full depth with the non-working leg extended in front. It demands exceptional quad strength, ankle mobility, hip flexibility, and balance — making it the ultimate bodyweight quad exercise.
Key Form Cue
Stand on one leg with the other leg extended straight out in front of you.
The Bulgarian split squat is a unilateral leg exercise that crushes the quads and glutes while improving balance and fixing muscular imbalances. Elevate your rear foot on a bench and squat down on one leg.
Key Form Cue
Stand about 2 feet in front of a bench with your rear foot elevated on it.
Walking lunges build functional single-leg strength, balance, and coordination. Each step challenges your quads, glutes, and stabilizer muscles in a way that bilateral exercises cannot.
Key Form Cue
Take a long step forward and lower your back knee toward the ground.
The reverse lunge is easier on the knees than forward lunges because you decelerate into the back leg. It builds single-leg strength and is excellent for lifters with knee issues.
Key Form Cue
Stand tall with dumbbells at your sides or a barbell on your back.
The bodyweight squat is the foundational lower-body movement that everyone should master before adding load. It builds quad endurance, hip mobility, and movement quality that transfers to every loaded squat variation.
Key Form Cue
Stand with feet shoulder-width apart and toes turned out 15-30 degrees.
Step-ups are a functional unilateral exercise that builds glute and quad strength while improving balance. The higher the box, the more glute-dominant the movement becomes.
Key Form Cue
Stand in front of a knee-height box or bench, holding dumbbells at your sides.
Mountain climbers are a dynamic plank variation that builds core endurance and cardiovascular conditioning. Hold a push-up position and drive your knees alternately toward your chest in a running motion.
Key Form Cue
Start in a high plank with hands directly under shoulders and body in a straight line.
The hollow body hold is a gymnastics-origin isometric exercise that trains total anterior core activation. Lie on your back and lift your arms, head, shoulders, and legs off the ground, maintaining a banana-shaped position under constant tension.
Key Form Cue
Lie on your back and press your lower back firmly into the floor — eliminate any gap.
The V-up is a bodyweight core exercise that simultaneously lifts the legs and torso to form a V shape at the top. It targets both the upper and lower abs through a full spinal flexion with hip flexion.
Key Form Cue
Lie flat on your back with arms extended overhead and legs straight on the floor.
Put these exercises into a real program
Revy's AI combines the best exercises for your goals into a personalized training program with progressive overload built in.