In this week's blog, Brad demonstrates 2 ways to perform a lunge and how to specifically target different muscle groups.
I got asked, "What is the proper way to do a lunge?" In general, lunges are going to work your quads. However, there are some minor tweaks you can do to put more emphasis on your hamstrings or leave the emphasis on your quads.
Performing The Lunge
If you want to do a lunge that emphasizes your quads:
- have a slight forward lean in your body as well as your shin
- Take a smaller step
- have a more upright shin with a slight forward lean in your torso.
- Take a larger step
This is going to create a longer stretch in your hamstrings. With both sets of lunges, you're going to need to step about shoulder width apart for stability.
Be careful when performing lunges, they put a lot of stress on your knees so balance is key. The more you do lunges the stronger your core muscles become so that your balance will get better.
Common Mistakes
Keep your stance
Avoid having your feet too close together or too far apart. To check and make sure you are in the correct lunge position, get into a lunge stance and step forward bending the front knee and lowering your back knee down to the ground. You want to have a 90-degree angle at the lowest point of the move.
Externally rotating the knee
Rotating or twisting your knee is one of the most common things that happen. The back knee always needs to stay within shoulder length distance as well as your foot when lowering to the ground. If you place your forward foot too wide then you could lose balance causing pain or injury.
Lunging too far forward
If you do not know how to properly do a lunge then I suggest asking a friend or professional to help you. When you are doing a lunge do not lean your body forward causing your knee to go past your foot. Essentially, you want to focus on lowering your body down towards the ground and keep your knee in a straight line.
Supplements to help
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