Lunges work all your major lower-body muscles at once, including your glutes, hip adductors, quads and hamstrings. The gastrocnemius and soleus, your two major calf muscles, also work to keep you stable during lunges. You should start doing lunges with only your body weight for resistance; once you're strong enough to do a full set of repetitions on each leg, you can use dumbbells, barbells or even a cable machine for resistance.
Basic Lunge Form
Before you add cable pulleys for resistance, you need a good grasp of the basic lunge form and technique. You can do lunges forward or backward. Take a large step forward or back, and bend both knees to sink into the lunge position. Both knees should be bent at about 90 degrees, with your front foot planted flat on the floor. You balance on the ball of your back foot, with the heel of that foot pointing straight up. Then push off with your front leg if you're doing forward lunges or your back leg if you're doing backward lunges to return back to the starting position. Make sure that you power each movement from the hips down; don't swing your shoulders back and forth.
Arms Down
Using a cable machine for resistance gives you the most choices of how to carry extra resistance during lunges. If you use two pulleys, they must be mounted on swing arms so you can position them low and close together, on either side of your hips. This gives you the option of holding a cable pulley in each hand, arms hanging down, as if you were carrying dumbbells. For this variation, you can either step forward or back for each lunge or assume the lunge position and sink into, then press back up out of, the lunge without moving your feet.
Versatility
You can also do cable lunges with a single cable pulley positioned in front of you. Attach a D-handle to the cable and grasp it in both hands, arms extended straight in front of you and angled slightly forward toward the pulley. Do forward lunges facing the pulley; the pulley weight stack applies extra resistance as you push off to return to the starting position after each repetition. Squeeze your core muscles, and pay special attention to staying upright, not allowing your torso to swing forward or back as you transition from standing to lunge position and back again.
Pros and Cons
You can also do lunges holding a barbell across your shoulders for resistance, but some exercisers never get comfortable with this positioning. Using a cable machine for resistance gives you the choice of several alignment options. Perhaps more importantly, it also gives you a way to vary your workout, which in turn keeps you interested and lowers your risk of hitting a plateau. The pulley also allows you to position your front foot on a balance disc for extra balance training, without any concerns about dropping a free weight if you lose your balance.
