What is a single leg lunge?
This single-leg lunge is a great exercise for both the quadriceps and hamstrings. Perform it on one leg and the other leg is on the ground.
Benefits of doing lunges
Lunges are a popular strength training exercise that helps strengthen and tone people’s bodies. The lunges strengthen your back, hips, and legs while improving mobility and stability. They are good choices for people who wish to get stronger or for current athletes such as runners or cyclists. Lunges benefits include:
- Improve balance and stability
- Relax your tense muscles
- Make you stand taller
- Lose weight
What muscle does a single leg lunge work?
A single leg lunge strengthens your leg muscles, especially the gluteus maximus, hamstrings, quadriceps, and calves. It is a bodyweight exercise that targets your hips, glutes, quads, hamstrings, and core. It also works the hard-to-reach muscles of your inner thighs.
- Lower body muscle: Quads, glutes, hamstring, and calves.
- Upper body muscle: Core muscles.
How to do a perfect lunge
This exercise can be done in many ways, including walking lunges, single leg lunges…and many more. You may also modify the intensity of the exercise to use your own body weight or extra weight such as dumbbells or a barbell. Here we explained how to do a single-leg lunge or say forward lunge. Follow these steps to master the move:
- Stand with your feet hip-width apart and engage your core.
- Take a big step forward with the right leg, shifting your weight forward so the heel hits first.
- Lower yourself until your right thigh is parallel to the floor and your right shin is vertical. It’s OK if your knee moves forward a little bit as long as it doesn’t go past your right toe.
- Press into the right heel to drive back up to starting position; repeat on the other side.
For further leg workout guides, see our post about Leg Workouts.