Zoe Saldaña’s Lioness Strength Workout: What Her Squats, Lunges and Glute Work Actually Train
UPLIFT IRON CLUBZoe Saldaña’s latest gym clips are more useful for the training underneath them than for the outfit headlines around them. During her Lioness-era preparation, Saldaña has shown a mix of weighted lunges, prone hip-abduction work, Smith-machine squats and other strength exercises with trainer Elena Ferretti. The session is compact, but it covers several qualities that matter for an action performer and for ordinary lifters: producing force with both legs, controlling one-leg positions, training the glutes through different actions, and building a repeatable base of strength.
The point is not that a celebrity has discovered a secret lower-body routine. It is that a few familiar movements can form a sensible session when each one has a clear job. Saldaña’s recent training also fits a broader shift she has discussed publicly toward using more resistance training rather than relying mainly on Pilates and conditioning.
What Zoe Saldaña’s lower-body workout actually includes
The recent session pairs three useful lower-body patterns. Smith-machine squats provide a stable bilateral movement that can be loaded progressively. Weighted lunges add unilateral work, forcing each leg to accept load and control the body independently. Prone hip abductions target a different function of the glutes and give the smaller hip stabilizers direct work without adding the fatigue of another heavy compound lift.
That is not a complete weekly program by itself. A hip-hinge pattern such as a Romanian deadlift, plus upper-body training and conditioning, would normally sit elsewhere in the week. But as a lower-body day, the structure is coherent: one stable strength movement, one single-leg movement and one targeted accessory. It is simple enough to repeat and easy to progress.
For an actor who has to combine gym work with rehearsals, choreography, travel and filming, that matters. The best exercise is often not the one that looks most athletic on camera; it is the one that delivers a useful training stimulus without creating unnecessary fatigue or soreness that interferes with the rest of the job.
Why Smith-machine squats and weighted lunges work well together
The Smith machine is sometimes dismissed because the bar follows a fixed path, but that stability can be exactly why it works in a hypertrophy-focused session. With less balance demand, the lifter can put more attention into knee and hip extension, control the depth, and repeat the same setup from set to set. The machine is not automatically safer or better than a free squat, but it is a legitimate way to train the quads and glutes hard.
Lunges then add what the Smith squat removes: a larger single-leg coordination demand. Each leg must decelerate the body, keep the pelvis and knee controlled, and drive back to the starting position. That can expose side-to-side differences that a bilateral squat hides. It also gives the hips and trunk more stabilization work without needing an unstable surface or a complicated drill.
The practical lesson is to let the two movements do different jobs. Use the squat as the main progressive lift, then use lunges for controlled unilateral volume. If balance limits the lunge before the target muscles are challenged, reverse lunges or lightly supported split squats are reasonable alternatives. Progression can come from load, reps, range of motion or cleaner execution rather than chasing heavier weight every session.
Hip abduction trains a different job of the glutes
Squats and lunges train the glutes primarily through hip extension, but the gluteus medius and other hip abductors also help move the thigh outward and control the position of the pelvis and femur. Direct abduction work gives that function its own slot instead of assuming every part of the glutes receives the same stimulus from compound exercises.
For physique goals, abduction work can also add targeted glute volume with relatively low systemic fatigue. That makes it an easy accessory to place after heavier leg work. The exercise does not need to be loaded aggressively: controlled reps, a stable pelvis and a range of motion the lifter can own are more useful than swinging through a heavier resistance.
This is also where celebrity-workout clips can be misleading. The visually unusual accessory often gets the attention, but it is usually the boring progressive work around it that does most of the heavy lifting. In Saldaña’s case, the accessory makes sense because it complements the squat and lunge patterns rather than replacing them.
The bigger takeaway is her shift toward strength training
The most useful part of Saldaña’s recent fitness story is not one exact set of lunges. It is the broader emphasis on resistance training. Recent training coverage has shown deadlifts, hip thrusts, squats and glute work alongside the conditioning needed for action roles. That gives her a base of strength and muscle that can support more specific stunt or performance work.
Ordinary lifters can borrow the structure without copying the celebrity. A practical lower-body session might use three or four controlled sets of a squat pattern, two or three sets of lunges per leg, then two or three sets of hip-abduction work. A separate session later in the week can add a hinge such as a Romanian deadlift, hamstring work and another squat or split-squat variation.
Keep most sets one or two good reps away from technical failure, then push harder only when form is stable and recovery is good. Track the exercises for several weeks instead of constantly changing them. More weight is one form of progression, but an extra rep at the same load, a larger controlled range of motion or better stability can also show that the training is working.
That is the transferable lesson from Saldaña’s workout. The celebrity angle makes the session interesting, but the useful part is ordinary programming: repeatable movements, enough resistance to create adaptation, targeted accessory work, and a plan that fits around the rest of life rather than exhausting the athlete for the sake of a dramatic training clip.
Recovery is the other part worth copying. Lower-body work can create enough local fatigue that adding more exercises is not automatically better. If performance drops sharply from set to set, soreness interferes with the next session, or technique gets worse as volume rises, the answer may be fewer high-quality sets rather than another exercise. Action-role preparation has to leave room for the rest of the week, and ordinary lifters benefit from the same constraint.
Saldaña’s session is therefore a useful example of exercise economy. A squat, a unilateral pattern and a glute accessory cover distinct jobs without pretending that complexity is the same as effectiveness. Keep the movements long enough to measure progress, adjust them to your own joints and equipment, and let consistent training—not celebrity novelty—do the work.
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