Lunges for Stronger Running! How to Grow a Runner [2 of 5]

Are you lunging right? This common exercise finds its way into many runners’ repertoirs. With a little understanding and some tweaking, the common lunge will help get you to that next level!

But let’s review first:
After we’ve learned the foundation of good squatting, we now have a good standard for what good spinal, hip, knee, and ankle mechanics look like. For example, if a knee forward squat is not strong or powerful, we don’t want a knee forward lunge (regardless of type of lunge). Why? It’s not strong. And it improperly loads our quads, puts pressure on our knees and reinforces the very same movement habits we’re trying to break. We cannot understand a good lunge, without first having our education in squatting. To understand squatting, we need a little dose of external rotation and stability that the side step gives us.

We’re still powering with two feet but now we have one leg in extension. This further narrows our base of support, increases the range of motion demands, requiring even greater stability and core strength at the spine.

What’s more, the lunge teaches us the basics and importance of rotation at the hips to stabilize our front leg (in flexion and external rotation) along with our rear leg (in extension and internal rotation).

While squatting or lunging gets us one step closer, they alone won’t make us a strong runner. We need to further challenge the lunges by increasing the demands of balance, strength and range of motion, and we do that in our next video by going vertical the step up.