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Sagittal Plane Lunge
Sagittal Plane Lunge is an exercise used to target the muscles of the legs and glutes. It is an effective single leg movement exercise for improving strength, balance, and coordination. To perform it, stand with your feet about hip-width apart and take a giant step forward with your right leg. Plant your right foot firmly on the ground and bend both knees until your back knee reaches the ground. With your front knee bent and your back knee touching the ground, lower your hips
Transcript
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This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness,
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we're going to talk about a lunge, one of
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the last exercises, one of the hardest exercises in our lower body strength or
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resistance training progression. Now it falls so far within our progression because it
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requires a huge amount of stability and coordination as well as optimal extensibility of our
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lower leg and lumbo pelvic hip complex. So, an example of where a lunge would not
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be appropriate: if somebody has anterior pelvic tilt, or they have feet turn
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out a little bit in that overhead squat assessment, you're going to have to
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regress this exercise with either a step up, a squat, or a modified squat, while you
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work on that dysfunction, and then you can progress back to this exercise when
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they can get near optimal mechanics after their warm up. So I'm going to have Laura come
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in and help me demonstrate this exercise. And what we're going to try to do is
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match the lunge with all of the other lower body exercises we do as far as
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sports are concerned, it's really not that much different. So from the anterior view,
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from the front view, we just want to make sure the feet, knees, and hips are in
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a nice straight line, just like we would for a squat or a step up. I'm going to have Laura go ahead and step
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back into this lunge. Good. And she has nice alignment. We see feet, knees, and hips all in a
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straight line. The biggest dysfunction you would probably see is that
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in some people this back leg has a tendency to the veer out a little bit. If
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that happens one of two things is happening: either they're leaning back, or they still have some
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residual tightness in either the rectus femoris, or sometimes their TFL.
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You're going to have to go back and do a
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little bit of foam rolling and stretching, and then try this exercise
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again. Usually if you get somebody's rectus femoris loosened up they're going to
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lunge just fine. Go ahead and turn sideways for me. Now, from the side view,
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we still want a parallel line between tibia torso, and we want to make sure
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that we have a neutral alignment of the pelvis. So I'm going to have Laura go ahead and
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step back with this leg and back into the lunge, and as you can see she does the lunge that so
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many of us have been taught with back straight up and down. The problem with
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that lunge is if you put that back leg back, and then lean back, you're forced to
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to load this back. This back leg is in a stretched position, it's not in any
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sort of position that is going to be able to produce an optimal amount of
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force, and the idea behind the lunge is to try and strengthen that front leg. It's
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like a squat with a kickstand. To demonstrate this and I want to have Laura go down
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into a squat, just go straight down, there we go, and then I want you to shift
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your weight to this leg, good, and move this leg back. One-legged squat with a kickstand.
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All this is doing is stabilizing, we're trying to load this leg. Good and then
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come back up for me. Good. So when she goes back down I still
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want this back leg straight up and down. I get people to think of a merry-go-round
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horse, that have the poles through the center of them. This should go straight
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up and down, but, we noticed that Laura still has this straight up and down back too. What I
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usually do with an individual like this is have them reach. As she goes down I'm going to have her
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reach with the opposite hand of the foot that's forward. Good. We get a little bit
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of a forward bend there. Now we have our hip flexion, her glutes stretched out, so it's
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loaded knowing that I'm going to get her glute to fire on the way back up.
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Go ahead and come back up, perfect. Back down, good. Are you starting to feel it in the front leg? -Oh yeah!
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Usually you start getting people do this, and I understand it's a little excessive of a forward
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lean at this point, but it's teaching her the proper mechanics, so we're going to
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go ahead and start here. Now, with Laura, this this is probably where I would stay. If I were going to
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progress with a strength progression I'd just add some dumbbells, from a stability
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progression I might add an Airex pad, or some other piece of balance of equipment in front of this
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front foot. Once I got her to do proper mechanics, there are a
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couple of ways to progress this saggittal plane static lunge. So go ahead just start standing
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straight up. The first progression we can utilize, you have probably heard of is
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a reverse lunge. So let's go ahead and go down into a reverse lunge, good and back up.
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You can see Laura still has that straight up lunge, so what I want you to do is when
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you're doing that reverse lunge still use the forward touch. Good. Get back up with
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this right glute. Good. Down, tell people to thrust forward with their hips as they
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come back up to get that right glute, and you can see her reverse lunge looks pretty good as long as
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she does this queue. If I wanted to increase the stability I can have her go from
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reverse lunge to balance, and then to balance she's not going to put this leg back
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down. The only place this leg's going to touch is behind. If she really had back down I
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could then put a piece of balance equipment under this right foot. Now, a
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progression for this would be the standard front lunge. The reason a front lunge is
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harder than a back lunge, is in a reverse lunge the foot that is
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decelerating, or slowing her down on the way down is still on the floor. In the front
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lunge she's going to build up momentum that she then has to decelerate with that
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front leg. So go ahead and back up a little bit for me. Alright, let's see your front lunge.
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There's a little bit impact there. Good, take a little further step, I still want you to reach forward.
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You can see that her
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back leg is still going straight up and down. So a reverse lunge would be good for Laura,
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this is probably a little tough. We could then do a front lunge to balance, just
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like we did on the previous exercise. You could then go ahead and add stability
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equipment here. It's pretty rare that I get somebody to be able to do a front lunge to
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balance on a piece of stability equipment, that would be tough. If we wanted to add weight you
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could definitely do that. If it were in a strength training program of course we
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could do walking lunges at a little faster tempo, if we were more in a power training
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program and working towards a little bit more speed. I hope the queues that I just gave
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you help you out. I hope you feel your front leg when doing lunges. I'll
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