For both fat loss and toning of the muscles, the duck walk is an underappreciated but very effective lower-body exercise. This energetic movement exercises your quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, and calves as well as enhances mobility and flexibility. Although it may look easy, the duck walk involves several muscle groups and, when performed properly, can burn calories, increase strength, and improve lower-body endurance.

Adding the duck walk to your exercise routine can have dramatic results, but it must be done with proper form and gradual build-up to prevent injury. Let's dissect all you need to know about this intense movement, from its advantages to performance and mistakes to watch out for.

What is the Duck Walk?

The duck walk is really a walking squat that requires a deep range of motion and stability. Squatting down low and stepping forward in a controlled fashion, the exercise hits the lower-body muscles hard while at the same time engaging the core for stability. Because it replicates the natural squatting motion, the duck walk tightens the hip flexors, making it a good exercise for individuals with weak hips or lower-body imbalances.

Apart from building strength, the duck walk improves flexibility and mobility, especially in the hips, knees, and ankles. Those athletes coming back from an injury or those wishing to enhance agility can benefit specifically from this exercise.

How to Properly Perform the Duck Walk

Before incorporating the duck walk into your workout routine, it’s essential to understand the proper form and technique. Since this exercise places significant pressure on the knees, maintaining proper alignment is crucial.

Step-by-Step Guide to Duck Walk:

Step 1- Begin with your feet shoulder-width apart and squat down as low as possible while keeping your back straight and core engaged.

Step 2- Your front foot must stay flat on the ground, with the rear foot on its toes.

Step 3- Keep pushing back your glutes and distribute your weight evenly to prevent knee strain.

Step 4- Make small, controlled steps forward by transferring weight onto your leading foot, then moving the trailing foot forward while still keeping your squat position.

Step 5- Stepping forward for 10 steps, stand up, walk back to the beginning, and repeat for three repetitions.

Because the duck walk is an advanced move that needs strength and mobility, beginners need to approach it gradually.

Modifications Beginners Can Make to The Duck Walk

If you have flexibility issues or feel pain while doing the duck walk, use these modifications:

Half-Squat Duck Walk: Rather than descending into a full squat, walk forward in a half-squat posture.

Weighted Support: Supporting yourself with a dumbbell or kettlebell held in front of your abdomen aids in stability and balance.

Common Mistakes to Avoid During Duck Walking

Rising Too High: Standing up from the squat posture decreases the effectiveness of the exercise and puts extra stress on the knees.

Taking Big Steps: Big steps will throw your balance off and create instability, and the movement will become less controlled and more susceptible to injury.

Knees Buckling Inward: Misalignment can strain joints and decrease the efficiency of the movement.

Disregarding Core Engagement: Maintaining your core engaged is critical for good posture and stability.

Which Muscles are Targeted by the Duck Walk?

The duck walk is a multi-joint movement which involves several groups of muscles being used at one time:

Main Muscles: Quadriceps, hamstrings, glutes, calf muscles, and core muscles.

Secondary Muscles: Stabilizers and hip adductors.

Making it a very good addition to lower-body exercise routines, building and toning the legs along with enhancing the overall endurance level.

How to Add Duck Walk into Your Exercise Routine?

Because the duck walk is a challenging exercise, it must be placed strategically in your workout routine to prevent overexertion.

• Frequency: Do the duck walk twice a week for best results.
• Timing: Do not do this exercise during your warm-up period; instead, incorporate it during cardio or leg day for best effect.
• Combining with Other Exercises: Include it towards the end of a squatting session or place it within a circuit routine for endurance exercises.

For those aiming to lose fat, one effective way is to include the duck walk as part of a high-intensity interval training (HIIT) session. It is done in bursts with limited recovery time that can increase the heart rate and support fat reduction.

Who Shouldn't Do the Duck Walk?

Although the duck walk is a good exercise, it might not be for everyone. Those who suffer from arthritis, knee injuries, or have painful joints should not try it since it puts quite a strain on the knees. If you do feel pain or discomfort while exercising, go and see a fitness instructor or a physiotherapist for an assessment.

For those wishing to test the strength of their lower body and take their level of fitness to new heights, the duck walk is a perfect inclusion in any training regimen. Go slow, practice good form, and step up intensity as needed to strengthen the muscles, increase flexibility, and reach your goal of losing fat.

Yoga is a great practice for people of all ages, conditions, and goals. Whether you wish to lose weight, strengthen your muscles, joints or structure or simply incorporate some exercise into your daily schedule. It is a great way to ensure your body gets the movement it needs.

With more and more people opting for desk jobs, or spending extended hours sitting, hunched over a laptop, back issues, along with many other problems have become the norm. You may realize that overtime, your body’s posture is getting ruined. Not only does this pose an issue for the way you present yourself, but it also affects your spine health, back health as well as bone health, whether it is your hip, knee or any other joint. To better this, try doing standing yoga poses.

Standing Yoga Poses For Posture

Standing yoga poses are fundamental for building strength, balance, and body awareness, all crucial for improving posture. By focusing on proper alignment within these poses, you can strengthen the muscles that support your spine, encouraging a more upright and open posture.

Mountain Pose (Tadasana)

This foundational pose helps you find your body's natural alignment. It strengthens your core and legs, bringing awareness to how you hold yourself, and encourages spinal lengthening. Focus on even weight distribution through your feet for a strong base.

Tree Pose (Vrksasana)

A classic balancing pose, Tree Pose improves stability and alignment by requiring a strong foundation through one leg. It helps to lengthen the spine and cultivate a sense of groundedness and lift, promoting better overall balance and posture.

Extended Triangle Pose (Utthita Trikonasana)

Triangle Pose lengthens the sides of your body and opens your chest. It strengthens your core, crucial for good spinal alignment. This pose also stretches tight hamstrings, which can otherwise pull on the pelvis and negatively affect your posture.

Warrior II Pose (Virabhadrasana II)

This powerful pose builds strength in your legs and engages your core, directly supporting better posture. The open hip stance and extended arms encourage an upright torso and broad collarbones, effectively counteracting any tendency to slouch.

Chair Pose (Utkatasana)

Chair Pose powerfully strengthens your legs and deep core muscles, essential for maintaining proper spinal alignment and preventing a slumped posture. It also helps to open your chest and shoulders, promoting an overall more upright stance.

Half Moon Pose (Ardha Chandrasana)

Half Moon Pose challenges your balance and strengthens your entire body, especially your core and legs. It opens the hips and chest, promoting spinal elongation and significantly improving your overall posture. It fosters balance and stability.

Standing Forward Bend (Uttanasana)

While a forward bend, this pose is excellent for releasing tension in the hamstrings and lower back, common contributors to poor posture. It encourages spinal lengthening and can help reset your posture by alleviating tightness that pulls your pelvis out of alignment.

Travelling is one of the best ways to experience new places and cultures as well as enjoy a good time. It is a great way to support your mental health. The break from your general monotonous routine helps your brain feel relaxed as well as helping ease anxiety, stress, and other day-to-day struggles. However, it is also strenuous, walking for hours or moving from one place or the other, can be mentally as well as physically taxing. After hours of walking or sitting during travel, your body can feel stiff, sore, and fatigued. So how does one tackle this?

Yoga Stretches After Travelling

Yoga is a great way to ensure you do not have to suffer muscle fatigue for days, before you feel any better. Yoga stretches are designed to target common areas of tension, helping to release discomfort, improve circulation, and re-energize you.

After a long day of walking or traveling, your body can feel stiff and tired. These yoga stretches will help release tension, improve blood flow, and re-energize your body.

Seated Cat Cow

This gentle stretch helps your spine move freely after sitting or standing still. It eases back pain and improves posture by gently arching and rounding your back. This movement also aids digestion, which can sometimes be slow during travel. It's a great way to start releasing stiffness.

Seated Spinal Twist

Twisting your spine gently helps release built-up tension in your back, especially after long trips. This pose improves how your spine moves and can soothe back aches. It also gently massages your internal organs, which can help with digestion and ease stress.

Child's Pose

This deeply calming pose is perfect for relaxing after a long day. It gently stretches your hips, thighs, and ankles, which can get tight from walking or sitting. It also eases back and neck pain and helps calm your mind, reducing stress and aiding digestion.

Downward-Facing Dog

This full-body stretch is great for waking up your body. It helps lengthen your spine and stretches tight hamstrings and calves from walking. It also strengthens your arms and core, boosts circulation, and can help reduce fatigue and clear a foggy mind.

Forward Fold

This classic stretch brings a sense of peace and helps release tension in your legs and spine. It deeply stretches your hamstrings and calves, improving overall flexibility. Folding forward also calms your mind, reduces stress, and can gently assist with digestion.

Legs Up the Wall

This relaxing pose is wonderful after being on your feet or traveling. It helps reduce swelling and tiredness in your legs by improving blood flow. It's also very calming for your nervous system, relieving tension and stress, and gently stretching your lower back and hamstrings.

Low Lunge

This pose is excellent for opening your hips and stretching the front of your thighs (hip flexors), which often get tight from sitting or walking. It improves hip movement, strengthens your legs, and can gently open your chest and shoulders, counteracting slouching from travel.

Tree Pose

This balancing pose strengthens your legs and core, while also improving your focus and stability. It's helpful after a day of varied walking surfaces or crowded places. It gently opens your hips and improves your balance and concentration, which can reduce mental tiredness.

Eagle Pose

This unique balance and twist targets your shoulders, hips, and upper back, areas that often get tight from carrying bags or awkward travel positions. It deeply stretches these areas, strengthens your ankles and calves, and boosts balance and focus. It can also help relieve leg discomfort.

What is your favourite arm day exercise? There's a good chance your answer is the dumbbell biceps curl. That is indeed a great answer but that excercise alone is not enough. If your goal is to build balanced arm muscle and strength, you'll want to pair your biceps work with a complimentary triceps movement. One of the best choices to do that is the skull crusher.

How To Do A Scull Crusher?

• Start by lying back on the bench. Don't arch your back—drive your shoulder blades into the bench, squeeze your abs and glutes, and keep your feet flat on the floor.
• Press the weight straight up above your chest. Your upper arm should be just past 90 degrees, at a 91 or 92 degree angle. Keep your wrists strong and a tight grip on the bar.
• Lower the weight slowly down to an inch above your forehead, moving only at the elbows. Don't allow your shoulders to shift forward; keep your upper arm still.
• Drive the weight back up (again moving only at the elbows), squeezing your triceps at the top.
• Keep these more detailed form tips from Samuel in mind during your skull crusher sets.

Here Are Few Things Your Should Know

No Arch: Maintain a sturdy body position: Feet flat on the floor, squeezing your glutes, and keep your core active so that you’re not arching your back on the bench. I know, I know; we always say you shouldn’t arch your back, but it’s more important to get the most out of the skull crusher. You want, at minimum a perpendicular upper arm angle relative to your torso; anything less than that, and your arm action misses the point of the skull crusher. If you arch your back, it’s harder to find that proper angle.

Shoulder Position: Once you have the bar over your head, drive your shoulders aggressively into the bench and maintain a little bit of tension in your mid-back. Then lean your upper arms back just slightly. Typically, you’ll see people aim to keep their upper arms perpendicular to the floor; I want you to be at a 91- or 92-degree angle instead. That slight shift places more tension on the triceps when you straighten your arms and prevents the straight-armed position from being a position of rest. Now you need to fully flex your triceps to maintain straight arms.

Elbows Tight: As you lower the weight, work to keep your elbows in. Your elbows and wrists should both be shoulder-width apart; not closer or farther apart. It’s common for people to let their elbows flare out as they’re doing skull crushers; avoid this. That’s a good way to injure your shoulders and it also takes emphasis off your triceps, diminishing the effectiveness of the move.

One Lever Only: Once you’ve gotten into this position, lower the bar to your head, moving only at the elbow joint. It’s tempting to let your upper arms roll back as you lower the bar toward your forehead, then shift your upper arms forward as you drive the weight back up, but that takes emphasis off your triceps and gets your lats involved. You’re aiming to move only at the elbows, maximizing the work your tris have to do.

Muscles Worked By Skull Crusher

The skull crusher is all about the triceps. The three-headed muscle, located on the back side of your arm, is the biggest muscle on the limb, making it an essential point of focus if you want to grow those guns. The name of the movement comes from the slightly precarious position you put yourself in to pull it off, isolating the muscles and moving the weight up and down directly above your head.

Benefits of Skull Crusher

The best triceps exercises put you in a good position to make use of the muscles' primary function: extension of the elbows. There are few better (or tougher sounding) moves to do this than the skull crusher. If you work with proper form, you'll isolate the muscles so that you're focused on only elbow extension. This will make your triceps stronger—which is essential for compound pushing exercises like the bench press—and spur muscle growth, too.

What Equipment You Need for Skull Crushers

The exercise is also fairly adaptable to the gear you have on hand. You can use dumbbells, a standard barbell, EZ bars, cable machines, and even your bodyweight to do skull crushers. For most of these variations you'll also need a bench, although you can perform the exercise prone on the ground, too. If you're low on equipment, you can do a bodyweight variation of the skull crusher that will provide the same type of triceps isolation, sans weights.