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.
