Form Fridays - Lunges

July 5, 2019 | by morwebadmin

We love a good lunge track at Local Barre! Lunges are so great for working our quads, hamstrings, calves, core, and of course those glutes! Let's break down proper form and body positioning for a lunge.

You can see Taylor in the top picture showing us proper form in her lovely lunge. Her front thigh is parallel with the floor, her back knee is at a 90 degree angle, and her joints are stacked. Her shoulders are above her hips, her back knee is also in line with her hips, and her front ankle is directly below the knee. Her upper body positioning and posture is rock solid - shoulder blades are drawing together in the back and her chest is proud. She is also showing us those nice straight arms as she pulls back on the barre and her body weight is driving through her front heel to help activate her glutes. This is ideally how all of our lunges should look in our barre classes unless your Leader sets you up differently!

Some common mistakes we see are:

• Straightening though the back leg and the front knee coming forward in front of the ankle (seen in bottom picture to the left). If the weight is more forward instead of back in the heel of the foot, it increases the risk of a knee strain or injury and makes it harder to actually engage your glutes.

And

• Upper body hinging forward (seen in bottom picture on the right). We often see this once we start to reach that burn and fatigue - people often let go of their upper body posture. Keeping our shoulders back and chest proud allows us to work on our postural muscle while we work the lower body. It also helps us to keep the weight centred where is should be!

Now let's lunge through this weekend!

Happy Friday, Locals!