How to Do Lunges: A Hinge Health Guide

Want to strengthen your lower body? Do something to reduce knee pain? Increase your flexibility? Try a lunge. This versatile exercise helps build strength in your glutes and legs, which can improve your balance, prevent injuries during sports and everyday activities, and help you return to exercise if you’ve been dealing with acute or chronic pain in your lower body. 

There are many different lunge variations. The most basic is a forward-bending lunge, which we’ll discuss here, along with modifications to make the movement easier or more challenging. 

Interested in getting a personalized exercise therapy plan? Learn more about Hinge Health’s digital physical therapy program and see if you’re eligible.

What Are Lunges and What Muscles Do They Work? 

A lunge is an exercise that involves stepping forward and lowering the front part of your body toward the ground as you support your weight with your front heel and lift your back heel off the floor. Doing lunges is a great way to strengthen your lower body, which can be helpful if you’re recovering from an injury or trying to prevent one.

Here are the primary muscles lunges target: 

• Quadriceps, located on the front of your thighs. Strong quads help with activities such as walking, running, and standing up from a seated position, and they help stabilize your knee joint, reducing the risk of knee pain and injury.

• Hamstrings, which run along the back of your thighs. Your hamstrings are key in bending your knees and extending your hips, which are necessary for walking, running, and lifting. Strengthening your hamstrings helps balance the strength in your legs, which can reduce the risk of knee and hip pain.

• Calves. Strong calves are essential for ankle stability and foot control, which are important in walking and maintaining balance. Well-developed calves can help prevent foot and ankle injuries and contribute to overall lower body strength.

• Glutes, especially the gluteus maximus, which is the largest muscle in the buttocks. Your glutes are essential for hip stability and movement, particularly in actions like climbing stairs, standing up, and maintaining an upright posture. Strong glutes can help alleviate lower back pain by supporting your pelvis and reducing strain on your lumbar spine.

• Core. Your core encompasses your entire trunk, but lunges specifically work your abdominals and obliques during the movement. A strong core helps with balance and stability in daily activities. It can also help alleviate lower back pain by reducing the load on your spine.

Lunges: Exercise Variations 

The information contained in these videos is intended to be used for educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice or treatment for any specific condition. Hinge Health is not your healthcare provider and is not responsible for any injury sustained or exacerbated by your use of or participation in these exercises. Please consult with your healthcare provider with any questions you may have about your medical condition or treatment.

To Do a Lunge 

• Take a big step forward with one foot. 

• Bend through your front knee while keeping most of your weight in your front heel. Your back heel can lift off the floor, coming onto your toes. 

• Hold this position while you find your balance. 

• Push through your front foot to return to a standing position.

As you do each rep, you might feel your leg and hip muscles working. 

Everyone is different, which is why you may need to modify this exercise to meet your needs. 

To Make Lunges Easier

1. Reduce your range of motion 

• Instead of lowering your knee all the way to the ground, perform a partial lunge by lowering your body only halfway.

• This reduces the intensity of the exercise, making it easier on your muscles and joints, especially if you're just starting out or have limited mobility.

2. Use a chair or wall for support

• Hold onto a chair, wall, or railing to help with balance as you perform the lunge.

• Adding support reduces the balance and stability demands, allowing you to focus on your form without worrying about falling.

3. Do reverse lunges

• Instead of stepping forward into a lunge, step backward. This can be less demanding on your knees.

• Reverse lunges often place less stress on the knee joint and can feel more controlled, making them a gentler option.

4. Slow down the movement

• Perform the lunge more slowly, focusing on controlled movements.

• Slowing down allows you to maintain better control and balance, reducing your risk of losing your form and making the exercise feel more manageable.

5. Shorten your step length

• Take a shorter step forward or backward when performing the lunge.

• A shorter step reduces the distance your body has to travel, making the exercise easier on your legs and helping you maintain balance.

6. Perform static lunges

• Instead of stepping into and out of a lunge, keep your feet in a stationary split stance and lower your body up and down.

• Static lunges remove the need to balance while stepping, making it easier to focus on your form and reducing the risk of wobbling or losing balance.

To Make Lunges Harder

1. Add weights

• Hold dumbbells in each hand or a barbell across your shoulders while performing lunges. (If you don’t have weights, household objects like gallons of water work great.) 

• Adding weights increases the resistance, which intensifies the exercise and helps you build more strength.

2. Increase your range of motion

• Lower your back knee as close to the ground as possible without touching it.

• Increasing the range of motion engages more muscle fibers, particularly in your glutes and hamstrings, making the exercise more demanding.

3. Perform plyometric lunges (jump lunges)

• Explode upward from a lunge position, switching your legs mid-air, and land in a lunge on the opposite side.

• The explosive movement increases the intensity, challenges your balance, and provides a cardiovascular workout in addition to strength training.

4. Incorporate a deficit

• Stand on an elevated platform or step, and then perform a reverse lunge so that your back foot drops lower than your front foot.

• This increases the stretch and the range of motion, particularly targeting your glutes and hamstrings, making the exercise more challenging.

5. Add a twist or rotation

• Hold a weight or medicine ball at your chest or in front of you and twist your torso toward your front leg as you lunge.

• Adding a rotational element engages your core muscles more intensively, increasing the complexity and difficulty of the exercise.

6. Perform walking lunges

1. Instead of stepping back to the starting position after each lunge, continue stepping forward into the next lunge.

2. Walking lunges increase the challenge by maintaining continuous movement, which tests your endurance, balance, and coordination.

Lunge Benefits

Lunges help to improve strength and balance, both of which are important whether you’re hoping to prevent an injury or recover from one. Some other benefits of lunges include: 

• Building strength in muscles used for walking, running, or high-intensity exercise

• Helping your leg muscles better support your knees if you have osteoarthritis 

• Allowing your glutes to better stabilize your hips if you have hip or pelvic pain

• Improving balance by stabilizing your core

• Stretching your hip flexors, which can help with pain resulting from sitting in the same position frequently

• Addressing muscle imbalances

How Hinge Health Can Help You 

If you have joint or muscle pain that makes it hard to move, you can get the relief you’ve been looking for with Hinge Health’s online exercise therapy program. 

The best part: You don’t have to leave your home because our program is digital. That means you can easily get the care you need through our app, when and where it works for you.  

Through our program, you’ll have access to therapeutic exercises and stretches for your condition. Additionally, you’ll have a personal care team to guide, support, and tailor our program to you. 

See if you qualify for Hinge Health and confirm free coverage through your employer or benefit plan here.

This article and its contents are provided for educational and informational purposes only and do not constitute medical advice or professional services specific to you or your medical condition.

References

1. Forward Lunge. Ace Fitness. Retrieved from https://www.acefitness.org/resources/everyone/exercise-library/94/forward-lunge/

2. Jönhagen, S., Ackermann, P., & Saartok, T. (2009). Forward Lunge: A Training Study of Eccentric Exercises of the Lower Limbs. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 23(3), 972–978. doi:10.1519/jsc.0b013e3181a00d98

3. Marchetti, P. H., Guiselini, M. A., Silva, J. J. da, Tucker, R., Behm, D. G., & Brown, L. E. (2018). Balance and Lower Limb Muscle Activation Between in-Line and Traditional Lunge Exercises. Journal of Human Kinetics, 62(1), 15–22. doi:10.1515/hukin-2017-0174

4. Muyor, J. M., Martín-Fuentes, I., Rodríguez-Ridao, D., & Antequera-Vique, J. A. (2020). Electromyographic activity in the gluteus medius, gluteus maximus, biceps femoris, vastus lateralis, vastus medialis and rectus femoris during the Monopodal Squat, Forward Lunge and Lateral Step-Up exercises. PLOS ONE, 15(4), e0230841. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0230841