How to Do Lunges: Muscles Worked & Proper Form

Introduction to Lunges

The lunge is a unilateral exercise for your legs and glutes. It’s great for building strength, stability and coordination. Since you need to work with one leg at a time, it can appear a bit more challenging than for example squat or deadlift.

You can do lunges using just your bodyweight, or with dumbbells, kettlebells, or a barbell. But regardless of equipment, they challenge your balance, core stability, and lower-body control.

It’s a very versatile exercise, which is easy to adapt to your fitness level and/or goals.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to do different kinds of lunges with proper form, which muscles they work, their benefits, and how to include them in your training program.

What Muscles Do Lunges Work?

The lunge is a compound exercise, meaning that it works multiple muscle groups simultaneously.

They primarily target your quads, glutes, and adductors. The load can shift a bit depending on which variation of lunges you pick. However, these differences are relatively small, and in practice, the variation you choose matters more for personal preference than for meaningful differences in muscle growth.

Lunge Benefits

The barbell row exercise offers plenty of benefits, such as:

• Bigger and stronger legs. Lunges effectively train your legs and glutes with a long range of motion and good muscle tension.
• Improves balance and stability. Because you’re working with one leg at a time, your core and stabilising muscles must work hard to keep you upright and aligned. This helps to build a strong and functional body.
• Can improve athletic performance. Lunges train you to move through a full range of motion while controlling your torso and hip position, which translates well to both sports and daily life.
• Versatile and scalable. Whether you’re a beginner or an advanced lifter, lunges can be adapted to fit almost any training goal. With alternatives using just your bodyweight to adding a heavy barbell, it’s a very scalable exercise.

Lunges Proper Form & Technique

Lunges can initially seem intimidating, but let’s break down the exercise.

Note that we all have slightly different anatomy, and the advice below won’t apply to everyone. However, it will be a good start for most people.

Setup

Stand tall with your core engaged and chest lifted, with feet about hip-width apart. Whether you’re using weights or not, keep your shoulders relaxed and your eyes forward. This creates a stable base before you start the movement.

Movement

Take a step long enough to allow both knees to bend to around 90 degrees. Taking too short a step can overload the front knee, while taking too long can throw off your balance. Forward, backward, and walking variations all require slightly different step lengths and control, so try around until you find your optimal length for that specific variation.

Balance

Keep your front knee aligned with your toes throughout the movement. Avoid letting it cave inward or shift too far past the toes. Your foot should stay flat and stable on the ground.

Try to think as if you’re walking on railroad tracks, not a tightrope. Your feet should stay hip-width apart, not directly in line with each other. This wider base gives you better balance and control during the movement.

Common Mistakes in Lunges

• Not keeping your knees in position. It’s easy to let your knees cave inwards, but this puts unnecessary stress on the knee joint and reduces glute activation.
• Placing your feet too narrow. A tightrope-like stance makes it harder to balance and maintain control. Step with your feet hip-width apart to create a more stable base.
• Rushing through the movement. If you focus on getting through the reps as soon as possible, rather than executing them with proper form, you’ll lose control, balance, and muscle activation. Slow down and focus on quality over speed.
• Not reaching full depth. Cutting the range of motion limits muscle activation. Try to lower your back knee as close as possible to the floor, as long as your mobility and comfort allow.

How Many Sets and Reps Should You Do of Lunges?

Your purpose for doing the exercise should guide the number of reps you do in the lunge.

• For muscle growth, around 6–15 reps per set is suitable.
• For strength, around 3–8 reps per set is good.

There are no clear-cut lines between these two goals, however. Training in the “muscle growth range” will still increase your strength, and training in the “strength range” will still cause your muscles to grow. It’s just a matter of what you are emphasizing.

Read More: How Many Reps to Build Muscle vs. Strength?

How many sets of lunges you should do depends more on your training background and your capabilities. How much training load are you used to doing, and how much does it take for you to stimulate growth?

An untrained beginner might grow from a single set of bodyweight lunges per week, but the veteran might need several sets with extra weight per week.

It also depends on how many workouts you do per week. You can tolerate (and grow from) a higher training volume if you distribute it over more workouts.

A good starting point is 3–4 sets of lunges in some form per workout and 1–3 workouts per week. Begin with that and see if you grow and get stronger from it. Later, if you think you might benefit from cranking up your training volume, you can try adding a set per workout (or add a workout) and see what happens.

Lunge Variations

There are many ways to perform the lunge. Some places place more demand on balance or mobility, while others allow for heavier loading or better isolation. Below, we will list some of the most common lunge variations and how they differ.

1. Bodyweight Lunges
2. Forward Lunges – with Barbell or Dumbbells
3. Reverse Lunges – with Barbell or Dumbbells
4. Walking Lunges – with Barbell or Dumbbells
5. Curtsy Lunges
6. Bulgarian Split Squats

1. Bodyweight Lunges

Bodyweight lunges are the most accessible way to perform lunges, using only your bodyweight for resistance. They’re a great choice for people who need to learn the movement, as warm-ups, or for high-rep leg training.

Without an external load, you can focus on movement quality, balance, and coordination. You can perform them by taking a step forward or backward. Many lifter feels like taking a step backward is a bit easier on the knees.

The shallow lunge can also be a useful variation if full range of motion is too hard, or you are recovering from an injury.

Once you’ve mastered the bodyweight lunge, you can progress to weighted variations for an increased challenge and better strength development.

2. Forward Lunges

In the forward lunge, you place slightly more emphasis on the quadriceps, which requires a strong eccentric control to manage the descent. Because your center of gravity shifts forward, it challenges balance and joint control more than reverse lunges.

Using dumbbells offers greater freedom of movement and can help with balance (and they’re easier to bail out of), while a barbell allows for heavier loads but demands more from your core and posture.

3. Reverse Lunges

In the reverse lunge, you step backward instead of forward, which tends to be easier on the knees and allows for better balance. This variation shifts more of the load toward the glutes and hamstrings, and because your front foot remains stationary, it often feels more stable.

Reverse lunges are a great choice for lifters who want to start adding extra weight, for people dealing with knee issues, or for those who want a more controlled alternative to forward lunges. The dumbbell version offers an easy setup and more balance, while the barbell version offers the possibility of higher loads.

4. Walking Lunges

Walking lunges turn the stationary lunge into a continuous movement where you alternate legs while stepping forward. This variation challenges your balance and coordination even more, and can be a good way to make the exercise more demanding without adding more weights.

Like the other weighted alternatives, the dumbbell version makes it a bit easier to maintain balance, while barbell walking lunges allow you to add a greater load.

5. Curtsy Lunges

The curtsy lunge is like a reverse lunge, but you place your rear leg diagonally behind your front leg, lowering yourself into a cross-legged position.

This variation places greater emphasis on the gluteus medius and inner thigh, increasing the demand for hip stability and coordination. Curtsy lunges can be an alternative if you want to target your glutes from a different angle or include more lateral movement in your training.

6. Bulgarian Split Squat

The Bulgarian Split Squat is a challenging lunge variation where your rear foot is elevated on a bench or platform behind you. This variation lets you work in a longer range of motion, which places a demand on both your strength, balance, and mobility.

Compared to standard lunges, it allows for greater loading of the working leg without requiring as much total-body movement. It’s an excellent choice for building single-leg strength, improving muscular balance, and targeting the quads and glutes.

Many lifters feel that mastering the Bulgarian Split Squat is a bit harder than mastering regular lunges, so it’s probably a good idea to learn those first.

Training Programs that Include Lunges

Here are some of our training programs that feature lunges in some form.

• StrengthLog’s 6-Day Upper/Lower Workout Split. 6x/week. A nine-week training program for intermediate to advanced lifters and bodybuilders who want to build muscle and strength.
• Bodybuilding for Beginners. 3x/week. Do you want to get started in bodybuilding? Begin your muscle-building journey with three full-body workouts per week! (The home workout version of this program includes lunges)
• Thicc: Advanced Lower Body Specialization. 5x/week. A six-week training program focusing on building a sensational lower body. Give this workout routine a go if you want full, round glutes and firm, shapely legs. 

All programs above (and many more!) are available in our workout log app StrengthLog.

By tracking your workouts in our app, you can easily see how many reps you did the last time you worked out, and try to improve in your next workout.

Download StrengthLog for free with the buttons below:

>> Return to exercise directory.