Correct Walking Lunges

Walking lunges are a great exercise that can be manipulated for a variety of emphasis. However regardless if it is quad, glute, lower body, or just pure metabolic output you are after; you want to make sure you mind the pelvis.

Walking lunges are one of the best places to challenge stability of the pelvis and make people manage the position of the pelvis under asymmetrical loads.

Many people make the mistake in unilateral exercises of transferring the load onto the core muscles and the spine by letting the lumbar spine side bend(flex) at the bottom. You will see the pelvis is no longer parallel from the floor in these cases. In some cases you will see this carryover to the rest of the range of motion and the pelvis will tilt the opposite direction at the top. Sometimes this is mistaken for “bad balance” when in reality it is weakness and instability.

A good walking lunge has a pelvis that is square to the floor throughout the entire range of motion. When you see this only happen on one side, it tells you there is a muscular imbalance or inhibition in the core. So working on proper abdominal, psoas, and quadratus lumborum function may be needed before performing unilateral movements for the lower body.

Bonus: Sometimes regressing to a split squat will allow a person to improve pelvic stability without having to spend a lot of time doing “rehab” based movements. But it must be executed properly to carryover.