Lunge!

There are certain calisthenics that make up the foundation of conditioning certain regions of the body. The lunge and squat happen to make up the cornerstone of the legs. The squats get a lot of attention thanks to the popularity of the Hindu Squat. It’s a great exercise but there is a lot to offer from the lunges too.

There are several flavors of lunges. The most well known is the forward lunge. Another great one is the reverse lunge. Rather than moving one of your legs forward, you instead lunge one backward while lowering your weight on the lead front leg. It ends up working the hamstrings on the rear legs rather than the quads on the front.

The lunge lend itself well to plyometric exercising. There are two ways that you can do this. One involves jumping up to rather than rising up. I like this one but I have a low roof so I came up with hopping up slightly and then rapidly moving the rear leg to the front. They both will make you sweat in a hurry.

Since I've been getting back in to my Brazilian Jui Jitsu, I've been interested in exercises that replicate fighting moves. What I've come up with is a reverse lunge with a knee shot. Descend down into a reverse lunge and as you come up, throw a knee with the opposite leg. Repeat this several times and then switch to the other leg. Knees force you to throw a limb against gravity. It's not easy to throw 20 of these, believe me.

Give these a whirl whenever you are exercising your legs. They are great, even if they're not sexy enough to get the attention these days.