If you hit the gym regularly, chances are you’ve been doing a lot of lunging. Likely you’ve done a lot of lunging also during your daily activities, believe or not. Lunging is, in fact, one of the 7 functional patterns of our body, that’s why performing it with proper form is so important. Here’s how to lunge functionally.
Read along to know how to improve your lunge by making it functional, or watch the video version of this blog post!
Lunging as a body’s functional pattern
Think about all the activities you carry on during the day: walking, standing up, picking up objects from the floor or even tying your shoes. All these movements come from the 7 functional patterns our body is based on, one of which is lunging. You typically lunge when you do movements such as picking up something from the floor or tying your shoes. So having a proper form becomes very important, not only to take full advantage of our body’s biomechanics, but also to make sure we minimize the possibility of getting injured; especially during a workout!
Most common mistakes when lunging
Typically a poor lunging position looks like this:
There are a lot of disadvantageous things going on in this stance, but it all starts from the very basic one. Step is too long. Simply think about it: how many times during the day you find yourself in this exact position? I bet never. This is because this position is totally unnatural and the extended step is only the beginning. Human beings move walking and the length of the step shown in this position is completely off in regards to a normal stride. The domino effect of how this affects a proper form involves a many compensation factors, let’s address them one at a time.
A stride like this one is very hard to hold for a prolonged period of time; this feels totally counterintuitive to me, as I imagine that the functional patterns our body bases its very mechanics should be comfortable. Try to hold this position without having your lower legs muscles burning after a few seconds. Ok you say, we’re here to get some workout so you want to feel your muscles burn. And that’s right, but…
Hip is hyperextended. Now, if you’re looking for a stretching exercise this might even work, but if we want to produce some force, this is not a great position to start. With such an hyperextended hip, the first consequence will be an anteriorly tilted pelvis. Not an ideal way to position your back if you want to load up some weight, as you’ll be putting a lot of strain on the lower part of your back. Risk of injuries is around the corner!
Balance is precarious. This position forces you to put your feet almost on the same line, making your balance very flimsy. It’s very likely that if somebody pushes you from the side you’ll easily fall; or you’re maybe struggling already to stay up because it’s very hard!
Not really a functional position. Besides all the above which already make this position not really useful, this way of lunging is not even functional as it serves no purposes; can you sprint from it? Can you comfortably and effectively jump? Seems to me that this way of lunging does more harm than good. Let’s see a way to lunge more functionally.
A more functional lunge
Now compare the previous picture with this one:
quite a lot of differences here going on, right? Quite easy to say that simply doing the opposite of what said above we already are in a better shape, literally! Now all the angles at joint level are a lot more favorable, not only performance wise but also injury wise.
We can hold this position for quite a long time as it doesn’t stress our muscles, we are ready to sprint, jump, or explode energy at any time and our overall balance is a lot sturdier than before. It also seems a more natural way of how our body should move, doesn’t it?