The lunge exercise is a great movement for developing the legs as well as the butt. This is why it is especially popular with women.

“The Lunge Exercise” Video

Let’s talk about the perfect lunge. There are a lot of variations of lunges and weight distribution is going to change slightly with each variation of your lunge.

Let’s start out by taking a look at the static lunge. First of all, keep your feet slightly wider than hip-width apart. Lots of people wind up doing lunges with their feet in one line. That actually decreases your balance and can cause you to crash down on your quadriceps ultimately leading to a tear. Imagine if you lose your balance in the lunge position, how’s your quad going to feel? You could easily create a muscle strain that could set you back for weeks. Make sure you’re nice and wide, we’re not after course stability here. That happens on other exercises like planks, squats, deadlifts and others.

Anyway, in a static lunge, or a split squat, depending on your terminology, the feet are hip width apart or slightly wider. Be on your toes on your back leg. Shift around 70% of your weight on your front leg. Then just drop down emphasizing bending your front knee, then push up by squeezing through your glute.

Now, let’s take a look at the reverse lunge. In a reverse lunge, you barely put weight on your back leg. Come down and back, barely putting any pressure on your back foot. Stand up through your front glute, actually leaving the back leg in the air, and then repeating on the next repetition. Key point to emphasize is no trunk rotation unless that’s intended in the exercise. Use your obliques for abdominal stabilization as well as your lower back muscles. These are your true core muscles.

A lunge isn’t just a lunge, it’s working your core, the abdominal musculature it takes to be able to sustain and endure any exercise you want to, at any weight you want to. For this exercise, abs a little tighter on the way down, toe touch on the back leg, then glutes activated on the way up. But here’s a little trick that a lot of people don’t know. Squeeze both glutes on the way up, kind of like pushing your pelvis forward, and you’re going to be a lot more stable.

Now when we get into our front lunge, again, all the weight goes to the front leg, then you push off. A common mistake is when a lot of people’s knees drive too far forward when they’re lunging, ultimately leading to patella tendinitis and quadriceps tendon breakdown. By the way, patella tendon and quadriceps tendon are the exact same thing. As your tibia goes past your toe on the lunge, you’re actually translating 90-95% of your body’s weight directly on that little tendon on your knee. So, keep a perfect alignment between your knees and ankles, and shift your weight back. A forward lunge is hard because of the weight shift forward, but not too forward so as not to injure your knee. You have to control it, and press through your heel. A big secret to a lot of lifting success is learning to distribute your weight in your heel.

Really try to master the lunge exercise and learn how to take your fitness to a brand new level. Reaching new heights, by mastering single-leg or separated movements with hamstring dominance because that’s where a lot of weakness lies.

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