How to Do Stationary Lunges

Video Transcript

"ALICE MONSAERT: We're going to be doing a stationary lunge using the bench, but I'd like to show you a lunge on the floor first. When you do a lunge, make sure that the knee stays in line with the foot and the back knee stays in line with the hip. So here's our lunge. We're going to increase the intensity by doing it on our bench. We have 2, 4, 6, 8 inches on our bench right now. Just place your foot in the center of the bench and step pretty far back with your trail foot, shoulders back, and I want you to drop your weight straight down and push straight up. The common error that I see in people using the bench for the lunge is they try and drop the back heel to the floor, which takes the focus off that front leg. So if I go down into a lunge and then I rock back and drop my heel, it takes off all the intensity that you've built up on this leg. So stay up on that back heel, drop straight down, and push straight up. To increase the intensity, you can grab a set of hand weights so that you're now pushing up more weight against gravity to increase the intensity on the muscle group, and/or you can slightly elevate the toes on the front foot. So now I've added a balance challenge. I sink down and push up. You can hold your weights at the side, or I like to hold them right in front of the chest to counterbalance the movement. So that's your stationary lunges using your bench for your hot legs."