How to Do a Front Lunge Lower Body Exercise

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Dr. Garrett Smith for Expert Village. This next group of exercises is the lunge group where, basically, one leg is always going to be in front of the other. Many people know lunges from Yoga. We're doing kind of the weight training lunges here, the strength training lunges. One important difference between the lunges we're going to do here and the Yoga lunges, Yoga lunges are done typically with the back foot turned in at about 45 degrees or more and the heel stays on the ground. This is not what we're doing here. We want both feet straight ahead. Ball of the back foot on the ground, heel off the ground. Front leg, far enough forward so that the shin stays vertical when we are at the bottom position. This will be the base bottom position of all of our lunges. We don't want to crack the knee into the ground, we want the knee to come just short of the ground. There's no point in banging your patella up against the ground. Front lunges, lunges going to the front. Now, if you have knee problems you may not want to start with these, you may want to start with lunges to the back or to the rear. Front lunges, you start in a standing position, step forward into your position, go down, return to the start, alternate legs, return to the start. Notice that you have to get a push off with that front leg to come back. If you want to hold weights in your hands to do this, you're welcome to hold weights in your hands. Some people use a bar. We're just going over body weight today. Going forward and coming back. You can continue to do all one leg first. Again, important form point, at the bottom torso straight up, shins relatively straight up. You should look like a bunch of 90 degree angles at the bottom. And that is a front lunge. Important form tip on this is that every joint at the bottom, basically, is at approximately a 90 degree angle. Ankle, knee, body straight up and down, so we have hip again this is one straight line. I know this is up slightly, but basically we're coming to 90 degrees in that too. I'll just do alternating."