Doing lunges regularly can be a part of your strength training workout, helping build your quadriceps strength as well as your glutes. To do lunges properly, make sure that your knee doesn't ever extend out over your foot.
Multiple Muscles Targeted
According to the American Council on Exercise, this single exercise works the abs, butt, hips and thighs all at once. To perform the perfect lunge, stand with one leg forward and the other back, imagining having just stepped across a creek. Then, lower your body until both knees are at 90-degree angles and your front thigh becomes parallel with the floor before slowly pushing your back leg forward.
Multiple Variations
If you work out lifting weights at the gym, you might be familiar with lunges as one of many leg exercises. But if you're a yogi, the mention of the word "lunge" may call to mind the extended lunges done as part of many yoga sequences. In yoga, both high lunges and low lunges are carried out. While lunges as a weight-training exercise are done by taking giant steps, in yoga the lunge, like other poses, is something that is held for a certain number of breaths before you transition into the next pose. The high lunge, according to "Yoga Journal," involves your front knee at a right angle and your torso on your front thigh, lengthening forward to stretch your groin. In addition to stretching your groin area, these lunges strengthen your legs, specifically your thighs and calves.
Similarity to Common Movements
In his 1999 article in the "Strength and Conditioning Journal," Justin Keogh explained why lunges have benefits over squats. One reason is that lunges more closely mimic the movements found in many sports; rarely, he notes, are the feet together when a sport requires an athlete to squat low or in common human movements such as running, jumping and throwing. Because lunges more closely mimic these movements, they are more optimal training exercises.
Single Leg Training Advantages
Keogh also points out that "performing exercises with one limb at a time also has several benefits." These include being able to detect muscular imbalances between each limb, to focus on one limb at a time, and thus to have better proprioceptive -- self-sensing -- demands on the athlete, requiring the athlete to focus on balance and stability in addition to just the larger movement. Keogh also notes that, because of the larger range of motion associated with some split exercises, exercises such as lunges can also help athletes improve the dynamic flexibility in their ankle, knee and hip joints.
References
- Yoga Journal: High Lunge
- The American Council on Exercise: Forward Lunge
- "Strength and Conditioning Journal"; Lower-Body Resistance Training--Increasing Functional Performance with Lunges; Keogh, J; February 1999.
