The way of developing great legs and glutes is by applying diversity to your workouts. The legs encompass big muscle groups, such as the gluteal muscles (glutes), the quadriceps (front of the leg), the hamstrings (muscles in the back of the leg), and the flexor group (lower leg). So, they have to be trained with different exercises and diverse planes of motion. A wonderful leg exercise is the reverse lunge or rear lunge, which concentrates more on the hamstrings and glutes but also stimulates the quads and core.
Reverse Lunges Benefits
- Efficiency: The reverse lunge is a compound exercise that works multiple joints and muscle groups simultaneously.
- Fat Loss: Since it works multiple muscles, it helps burn more calories and, subsequently, lose more fat.
- Aesthetics: Reverse Lunges help sculpt a rounded boot and beautiful legs.
- Balance: This unilateral exercise, which trains each leg separately, activates your stabilizing muscles, and helps you become more balanced and coordinated.
- Alignment: Working one leg at a time, also, helps you to deal with misalignments in your body and correct imbalances. This makes you more symmetrical and avoids overcompensating from your dominant side.
- Flexibility & Mobility: Reverse lunges involve a big movement, which helps you increase your hip’s range of motion and make you more mobile.
- Core Strengthening: They stimulate your core area, helping to improve your posture and even prevent injuries.
How to Do Rear Lunges
There are a few ways of doing reverse lunges. If you are a beginner, you can just use your own body weight and keep your hands in the middle or sides. Or you can do reverse lunges with dumbbells or reverse lunges with barbell. Here is how to proceed:
- Stand tall with your chin and chest up, shoulders back, and your core tight
- Keep your feet hips apart
- Take a big step back and land on the ball of your feet
- Bring that leg back to the starting position
- You can keep working on that leg for 8-15 repetitions and switch legs, or alternate legs
Do you want to challenge yourself more? Perform a variation called reverse lunge to knee drive. Initiate the movement as normal. Then, when you are returning the leg to the standing position, bring your trailing leg through and drive the knee up to chest height. Return to the initial stance and repeat.
Avoid Reverse Lunge Mistakes
- Keep the front leg on a 90-degree angle so that your knee doesn’t pass your toes, which prevents straining the knee
- Avoid keeping your shoulders forward and rounding your back, which put unnecessary stress on your back
Video: Reverse Lunges with Dumbbells
Leg Workout
You can complete your lower body workout with Squats, Front Lunges, Side Lunges, Squat Jumps, and Single Leg Deadlifts.
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To a Fitter Healthier You,
The Fitness Wellness Mentor
