The lunge
is a great exercise for working the thighs
and glutes but it has one major problem.
Every time you step foward with the dumbells
in your hands, all the force of the weights
and your body shifting forward goes right
into your front knee.
It's not so
bad if you're using lighter weights, but
it can affect your knees even then. If you're
using heavy weights, forget about it! The
force of each step forward gives you potentially
damaging stress without any additional benefits
over a split squat type of movement.
What this
variation of the Dumbell Lunge does for
you is take the forward shearing force off
the knee at the bottom and keeps it on the
thighs and glutes, where it belongs.
Because instead
of stepping forward onto the flat ground,
you're going to plant your front foot on
the face of a decline bench (it appears
to be an incline when you're doing the exercise,
which is why I called it that) so that you
get a direct push back instead of an angled
push back.
This difference
means the force to the knee is GREATLY reduced.
So basically,
grab a couple of dumbells and stand in front
of a decline bench. Make sure the bench
isn't going to slide forward if you put
any pressure on it. Set your front foot
on the face of the bench, about halfway
up, dumbell hanging at your sides.
That's your
start position. Now move forward into the
lunge position:
Because the
bench is elevated, you can go nice and deep
into the lunge position (more so than if
your front foot was flat on the ground).
This allows you to really get down and work
the glute on that side - the greater the
stretch, the greater the glutes will be
involved.
Push yourself
back up to the start position, keeping your
front foot on the bench still - it's better
for balance to keep the front foot on.
Once you've
done your reps on the one leg, switch to
the other leg and do your reps.
When you do
the next set, start with the leg you didn't
start with on the first set. This will help
to keep things even in terms of strength.
One thing
to note, when you're setting yourself up
for the exercise, if you place your left
foot on the bench, your right foot should
be about 4 to 6 inches to the right of the
centerline of the bench. Basically, don't
set your right foot directly in line behind
the left - you need to keep some horizontal
separation between the two feet so you don't
fall over.
