Sick of Lunges?

Over the past month I’ve received countless emails, texts, DM’s and everything else about how sick people are of doing lunges. The truth is, they’re not going anywhere, they’re an imperative movement pattern we must continually train. Single leg training is a staple in all functional strength training programs, and for good reason, they help a lot of things. 

Perhaps most importantly, if you can’t lunge, you can get up and down from the floor. Which, surprising as it may be, is a task required for lifelong independence. It can quite literally be boiled down to an issue of safety. Can’t lunge, can’t get up, can't live alone.

In a less morbid sense, lunging teaches you how to stabilize your hip. It works all those little muscles in your hip that cooperate with your glutes to open and close your hip. These muscles help absorb force. When you step back or forward and lunge down, you must decelerate, absorb and transfer that force to stand back up. It’s quite complicated, actually, but lunging teaches you this skill and it becomes second nature. 

Lunging demands stability in your spine as well. You can’t lunge well if your spine is swaying all over the place. It’s a 3D demand, you need to prevent your spine from slouching forward, or flexing, and, at the same time, you must prevent it from arching, or over-extending.

Maybe they’re getting boring because the different variations of them are showing up almost everyday in your program, but remember, whatever makes it way into the program is there for a reason. It’s there to help you move better, build strength and keep your independence.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain