Women Fitness - The Lunge

Learn how to perform workout routines for women - The Lunge

Margie Weiss: I am Margie Weiss and this is Women's Fix-it Zone Workout. We're going to be doing a lunge today, and it's a moving lunge. So we're going to do it without any weights. Feel free as you get more comfortable to add some weights at your hips, on the movements that are smooth, not on the plyometric movements, which are jumping. First of all, we're going to you the position straight on. In a lunge position, if your shoulders are two feet apart, your feet should be two feet part as in a railroad track. What you don't want to do is stand on a balance beam, because it can be hard to balance. As you step out, you step out on your heal so that your knee stays behind your toe and you are sinking straight down. Knee on the back can go as low as parallel to the ground, you don't want it to lower stress on the patella, which is your knee cap. What she is going to do now, she is going to move. So she is going to start from one side and she is going to move forwards in a lunge, stepping on the heal, belly is into the back, tick ups on her head, and she is going to step and sink, does not have to be done fast, matter of fact, better if it's not fast. Then she stands up and turns around. We are going to add something to this. Now you would maybe doing it more times, but we are just show you kick back, kick front, and lunge. As she kicks back, she is squeezing here, now she is using the front of her legs, then she is sinking. If you had a large space, a long space, you would perhaps do ten of these or 20 of them in a row. Coming back, we're going to add a little bit to this. We're going to add what's called a pose, which is just a little baby motion. It's really good for the knees and because it stains the motion, it forces you to use the muscles for a longer period of time. This is low impact because she is not leaving the ground with both feet at the same time. We're going to give you the advanced option, which is a plyometric, which is a vertical jump, much more stress on the knees, so make sure that you know what you're doing before you do this. But she is going to hop one, two. Then she is going to step forwards and sink. Again, hop one, two. And one more time, she is going to go down and hop, one, two. Now those are four variations of a lunge. You can decide how many you want to do. The next day is when you're going to feel the muscles in the thighs. So if you start with may be ten of each of those of the total of 40, then if that's quite enough and you don't feel it at all the next day, you may want to double that. You can go as much as -- generally, we will do 100 lunges around the room in various forms, level athlete, so that's something for you to work towards.