Exercise Plan - Quadricep Workout With Lunges

Margie Weiss: My name is Margie Weiss and this is a quad video. Continuing on with the quad workout, we are going to do a basic lunge. Notice here, Janice is down on her knee with her back foot hooked. If she were to stand up from here, her feet are pretty darn wide. It s a very wide straddle which you are going to have in a proper lunge, because now as she bends her knees, you will notice that she can get a 90 degree position. Pick up on head, back is straight, belly is into your backbone so that as you lunge down and you come up, you are not only getting your quad you are getting your glute and your hamstrings as well. It s a really good overall leg workout. Janice can also from this position, she can add some variety by putting either hand weights at her waist or at her shoulders and she can do the same exercise. Tucking the belly in. You wan to feel like an elevator, going straight down and straight up. Yeah, weights can be at the waist, weights can be at the shoulders if you want it, little bit more core strength as you are doing it, but that back it nice and straight as she goes down. Front knee never goes before the toe, it always stays behind it. Back knee goes down almost to the floor so that the calf here is parallel. If you go down too low obviously you don t want to bang your knee on the floor, but you can go a lot lower than you think. And it s that back knee that s doing the work.

Let's change it up, just a little bit. Let s put up a weight over her shoulder, a barbell. So, she can take that bar, put it over her shoulders, chin still stays neutral. Same exercise, just a little bit different. So there is a lot of variety that you can do. You can also change up the timing. You can do singles, which is what she is going down and up. You can go slower like down, down, up, up. You can make is even slower 4, 3, 2 pause. 4, 3, 2 at the top. What that does is it forces you to stop your momentum at the base and stall, restart you momentum as you rise. Now, let's get a little bit trickier. Say, I am a little bit better and I can do these pretty well. We can use a step. She can either put her front foot or her back foot on the step. If she does this, she is going to need to her back foot farther back, her heel really high in the air. A little bit tough to balance. Now, if you put one foot right in front of the other, it looks like you are stepping on a balance beam, you are going to fall over. So make sure your legs are wide enough. One knee by one shoulder, other knee by the other shoulder. That way you have a wide stance. So when you are trying to do this and you are trying to balance, you are not going to fall over. She can also do this same exercise by simply turning around, putting her back foot on the bench or the step or whatever you have at home. So, one foot is going to go on. Now, what she has to do is hop that front foot out, pretty far because as she squats down she still want that front knee to be behind her toe. So if the front foot is too close to the bench, she is going to end up sacrificing her knee. Back is still vertical. Dropping and lowering and again it s very smooth on the way down and it s smooth on the way up. We are never completely straightening the legs, almost but not quite. She is breathing in nice even rhythm and feel free to alternate your timing. So, it can go down for 2 and up for 2. You can go down for 3 and up for 1. 3, 2, 1 rise. We are doing this bending and rising. You can go slowly, you can go faster but make sure that you keep it smooth and continuous. When you have finished your exercise, you want to make sure that you safely take the bar over head. So you are going to step off your bench and you got to lift that bar bringing it close to your body, slide it down to get out of position safely. So you will notice there are a lot of varieties of just the plain lunge, on the floor with hand weights, with the bars, with the bench. A lot of different positions. You can also move the lunges. You can go forwards and backwards walking lunges. Forwards, backwards or sideways, lot of different varieties of lunges.