Lunges | 3 Most Common Mistakes

Hey, EarthFIT fam! Do you have problems with walking lunges? Today I’m gonna go over the three most common mistakes that we as trainers see here in the gym. I’m gonna go over how to correct those. So let’s get those lunges right. Without further ado, let’s get into it.

So the walking lunge, great exercise, very most people, very familiar with this great strength building, great for the glutes, great for the quads, hamstrings, all those lower extremities… Fantastic! Now there are three common mistakes that I see that often lead to knee pain while we’re performing this exercise. So today I’m gonna kind of go cover what those three most common mistakes are and how we can avoid those. Okay.

(1) First, mistake number #1, I often see when people are lunging, first of all, they’re just not going low enough. This is the easiest one. So in a lunge you wanna be able to get to your end range of motion. So my end range of motion is all the way down to the turf. Okay that’s not for everybody. Sometimes people can only, you know, go up to this if, if they have hip impingement or what not. So to correct that… how to get lower, you’re gonna really wanna work on your ankle mobility and hip mobility. If you feel like it’s blocked, like I step out, I can only go to right here. Okay. Ideally how low you should be getting, we wanna make this go nice and even here at a nice parallel level.

So you’re thigh should be parallel to the floor when you lunge. And then we press up through our heel and we go to the next step. So not going low enough would be the first one. How you correct that we really need to work on one, just performing the movement with less weight can assist in that and then really work on your ankle or hip mobility. That would be if you cannot get low enough.

(2) Second, most common mistake – Knee traveling way out past the toe. So it goes way out here. This results usually, two reasons this usually happens. The most common one is when people do have weights, we just kinda let the weights come forward as we step, as you can see, that’s gonna put extra pressure and really make my knee travel out past the toe. Another common mistake why people would do that is that we’re taking way too long of strides. And we’re getting off balance a little bit, so it’s really easy to correct both those issues. The first one, just pull your shoulder blades together. 

Remember every exercise you do can be a posture, improving exercise if you’re doing it the right way. So chest up tall, pull those shoulder blades together, and we’re gonna step. And you’ll notice these dumbbells aren’t going to move when I do that, as opposed to, if I’m really loose, kind of have ’em in front of me, they’ll easily just kind of swing out and carry me forward. So that’s a simple fix for that. A stepping out too far, a really simple fix for that is gonna be up all the way up and then down just like that. If we slow down the majority of the time, that issue will correct itself. It’s when we get in a hurry, which leads me right into my third mistake that I see most people do is simply, they’re just going way too fast that can lead to your steps being all over the place, that knee coming out past the toe. 

So sometimes we’ll just see people kind of sprinting, just like going as fast as they can banging their knees off the ground. Remember we want to control and really own the movement.

(3) So, the third mistake, the way to fix that, just like I showed you in the other one, bring the knee up a little bit higher in between reps and control it unless you’re instructed to go really fast. This is really a good, appropriate way to take your time doing lunges, because it’s not only a strength building exercise. There’s lots of stability, and control components in that, which are great for all those lower body extremities.

So to recap, three most common stakes mistakes I see people make. One, we’re not carrying good posture, right? We’re letting the knees come out in front of our toes. That comes from the posture or going too quickly. 

The last one I just covered going way, way too fast. And then the first one that we covered, and really a common one, not getting low enough. All you have to do to improve that would be to work on your ankle or, or hip mobility and lighten the load really works to deepen that range of motion, not only in walking lunges, but also in split squats, and regular squats as well will improve those. So those are three most common mistakes. That’s how to correct them. Hope you guys found value in this video. If you loved it gimme a heart, if you liked it gimme a thumbs up and as always, stay strong.

-EarthFIT Coach Sam