Formosa Fitness

This is a clip from a new video aimed at trainers on the lunge. Many of you will recognize most of these moves from our classes.

Why do I make every single client in every single group or private session lunge? Of all the basic human motor patterns, lunge is usually the first one to go and needs the most work.

Those of you who are not trainers would be shocked at the number of people that can't lunge safely, let alone productively. And I should know because I couldn't do it either at one time. This was one of those movements that I never did in the gym. I've harped constantly on this blog about "work on what you can't do" and that attitude comes from my past experience. I couldn't lunge correctly so I put this movement into the don't-do-it-because-it-hurts category. But then I started working on it, the pain cleared up and now I not only lunge safely, but I can actually use heavy weights with it to produce results.

From what I can tell training clients, the lunge as a movement pattern starts to deteriorate in the early 30's for most people. As it gets worse, the squat starts getting effected. And then people gravitate towards machines that don't require them to lunge or squat leading to a downward spiral as far as movement goes.

Fight that spiral by learning to lunge. Maintain those movement patterns if you want longevity!