What is the Walking Lunge Exercise?

The walking lunge is a simple and effective exercise to build lower extremity strength, and promote good ankle, knee and hip health. This exercise is often prescribed by Physical Therapists to patients who need to improve lower extremity strength overall following an injury or surgery.

• Purpose
• Benefits
• Classic walking lunge
• Walking lunge with weights
• How many
• Final thoughts

What Muscles Does It Target?

The walking lunge is a large ‘functional’ exercise so there are many muscle groups involved. It does an excellent job of targeting the glutes, hamstrings and quads, but also involves core stabilizers of the trunk, foot and ankle.

What Other Benefits Does it Have?

Improved strength is not the only benefit of doing walking lunges. Patients who have mobility restrictions in their ankles or hips will see improvements in range of motion within a few weeks.

Poor balance and coordination is responsible for a lot of falls in the older population and can contribute to sports injuries among athletes performing highly skilled movements. The walking lunge is a safe and controlled way of working on lower extremity balance and coordination.

How Do You Do The Walking Lunge Safely?

• Take a larger than average step forward and lower the knee of the trailing leg toward the floor.
• At the bottom of the lunge your hips and knees should be at 90 degrees.
• Do not allow your knee to touch the ground at this point .
• Transfer weight onto the front leg and raise yourself up to a standing position.
• Step through with the trailing leg to begin the next lunge.

Variations of the Walking Lunge

The walking lunge is a very versatile exercise. It can be safely used as a rehabilitation exercise for people who are quite deconditioned and it can be used by high performance athletes to improve leg strength and endurance. Athletes may need to add some weight to further challenge themselves and provide enough of an exercise stimulus. Add weight cautiously. Reduce the amount of weight if your form is breaking down (wobbling on your feet, knee touching the ground etc)

How Many Walking Lunges Should You Do?

Walking lunges can be measured in numbers of repetitions or in distance walked. The important thing is that you use the same method each time so you can track progress. If it is your first time performing the walking lunge do the exercise until the effort feels like a 7/10 on your ‘difficulty scale’, rest for 1 minute and perform this three times. As you begin to feel more confident and well balanced doing the exercise you can push to an 8/10 on your difficulty scale. If you are walking for more than 50 meters before feeling the burn, consider adding some weights!

Final Thoughts.

Elevators, escalators and the hours in front of screens has resulted in a general population with poor hip and leg strength. The walking lunge is one way that you can build some great functional strength back into your life.

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