10 most important exercises you will ever learn

Week 7: the lunge

Another of the leg classics this week, the lunge is one of the old school exercises that is great for your legs, your bum and can be combined into a full body exercise too by adding in some other exercises.

It’s super easy to do, anyone of any age can manage it, you can work to your own range of motion, it’s easy to adapt and you will see results quickly with it too, so what’s not to love? As with any of the exercises in this series, you can add them into your existing routine or just try them on their own too and build up your resistance training from there. So don’t be afraid to give it a try, just take it easy, ease into it and see how you get on.

Step 1:

Begin with your feet together, back straight and core engaged by pulling your bellybutton in towards your spine. Keep looking straight ahead which will help to improve your posture and keep your hands on your hips which will help to improve your balance.

Step 2:

Simply take a step forward with your right leg and bend the left knee towards the floor. You are doing it correctly when your right knee isn’t extending over your right toe. You should always be able to see your toe on your leading leg. Only drop the left knee to the floor as far as you feel comfortable. Now stand back to the starting position and repeat on the right side for 15 and then switch to the left leg for 15.

Variations

There are lots of simple ways to adapt lunges to make it more difficult.

Add weights either using dumbbells or barbells.

You can change your range of movement too, by doing a static lunge, starting with the feet in position 2 and just going up and down without any step back. The harder variant of this is to shorten the range of movement to a half range, by going all the way down and half the way back up and then down again.

You can also add a step too to increase your range of motion. The final variation is to add in exercises as part of the lunge such as bicep curls, military press, side lateral raise or dumbbell twists to name but a few so don’t be afraid to experiment.

Fitness tip of the week

Mix it up! The body is a pretty incredible machine, it adapts to any situation that you place it in. Stand all day and it adapts to that, sit all day and it adapts to that too. When it comes to exercise, adaptation is key too. You need to change your workout on a weekly basis in order to see the best results possible. You can change pretty much anything – speed, weight, distance, route or exercise.