If These Side Lunges Could Talks

If Side Lunges could talk they’d tell you all about how important they are to your overall movement and strength. They’d tell you that a lot of what we do in the gym is performed in the saggital plane, which is basically up and down, forwards and backwards. Very productive movements like squats, push-ups, rows and presses to name a few, but limited in that they typically develop the larger muscles in our body and neglect some of the smaller, critical muscle groups that the side lunges work very well: glute medius (side butt), adductors  (groin and inner hamstring), QL and obliques (deep ab muscles).

Side Lunges would tell you that they are a vital movement to develop all of our glute muscles, as well as maintain the health of our hips and knees by working those hard-to-get to adductor muscles. They’d also tell you that they are great for evening out single side imbalances that bilateral movements typically create. They help close the gap between your weaker non-dominant side and your stronger dominant side.

If side lunges could talk they would tell you that they are helpful to develop ankle and hip mobility, two predominant culprits in issues that run up the chain including the overall performance of your entire body. In the hand-to-hand variety like we see today, they’d tell you that there is added benefit of developing muscle in our arms and back, as well as critical grip strength development that often plagues most folks in the form of weakness.

And last but not least, they’d tell you to make sure that you really focus on sitting back into the landing, not crashing your knee forward.

…if side lunges could talk.

-Dave