Completing a Barbell Lunge
Leah ZahnerDescription
The barbell lunge exercise is a great way to improve your ability to maintain posture throughout your bowling approach and add strength and balance to the finish position. A barbell lunge increases the difficulty of the lunge, so you can get more out of it. When you add the barbell to a lunge, it allows you to overload the exercise beyond your body weight and perform the movements within muscle-focused rep ranges.
Barbell lunges target:
- – glutes
- – hamstrings
- – quads
Benefits of barbell lunges include:
- – Engages all lower body muscles
- – Improves upper body and core strength by maintaining good posture throughout the exercise
- – Shorter steps target quads
- – Longer steps target glutes
If you are working out at home, you will likely have to pick the barbell up off the floor. This can be difficult, so add weight accordingly. If you are working out at a gym, you should have access to a squat rack, this piece of equipment avoids the deadlift from the floor.
Step 1
With the barbell across your back, step forward with your right foot and sink into a lunge keeping both legs bent and your knees as close to the floor as possible.
Step 2
Return to your starting position and switch legs.
The barbell acts as an indicator, letting you know if you are out of balance. This occurs because it is stabilized on your shoulders.
If you lean too far forward or backward, the weight of the barbell will tip with you in either direction indicating that you are out of balance.
Check out “How to Do a Rotating Lunge” and “Medicine Ball Exercises: Lunge with a Side Bend” for more lunge exercises to help improve your game.
One of the ways that you can challenge a basic lunge is to add a barbell. If you have a barbell at home, you'll probably be lifting it from the floor and setting it on your shoulders. If you're at a gym where you have the advantage of a squat rack, you'll be able to set up your barbell with the amount of weight that you'd like to work with, step under the barbell, bring the bar across your shoulders, and get ready for your lunges. The great thing about using a barbell is when you have it across your shoulders, that weight is stabilized right above your hips, and you'll notice right away in your lunge if you start to tip forward or back because that will be exposed by that weight tipping forward with you. Make sure that you keep your shoulders right over top of your hips as you perform your full lunge.
And when you come back to stand, safely set the weight back the way you got it.
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