Staying fit entails more than just shedding off the extra pounds. In addition to eating a healthy diet, you also need to incorporate variety into your workout routine. While doing one type of exercise is way better than not exercising at all, it’s more ideal to balance out strength training and cardio exercises.
If you are more of a cardio person, lifting weights is probably not an exciting thing for you. Thankfully, that’s not the only way to achieve a fit and strong body. Doing lunges is one of the best strength exercises you can do without lifting a single dumbbell.
There are two main types of lunges: stationary and walking lunges. For now, we’re going to talk about the latter and its benefits.
WALKING LUNGES
Compared to stationary lunges, walking lunges are better since they utilize more muscles in the leg and thigh area. Doing this type of exercise also requires stability. In addition to those two, here are more reasons why you should be doing this type of exercise.
Benefits of Walking Lunges
Improved Balance
Since walking lunges work both sides of the body, it can help improve your coordination and balance. Other types of leg toning exercises such as deadlifts and squats can help strengthen the muscles in the same area but won’t help as much when it comes to balance and coordination.
Increased Hip Mobility
Walking lunges are a great alternative to lifting weights. However, if you do lift weights, this exercise can help minimize your risk of injuries related to weight-lifting. Incorporating walking lunges to your regular workout routine can increase your ability to maintain control from the knee to the hip flexion.
If your lifestyle is quite sedentary, your hips can benefit a lot from walking lunges as well. Sitting for long periods can tighten the hip flexor muscles. You can undo this negative effect by combining walking lunges with a variety of hip stretching exercises.
Toned Gluteal Muscles
Your gluteal muscles are also toned and strengthened when doing walking lunges. Being one of the biggest muscle groups in the human body, the butt is comprised of two parts – the gluteus maximus and gluteus minimus.
Working together, these two gluteal muscles play an important role in maintaining hip and knee stabilization. To maximize this effect, pay attention to your knees when doing walking lunges. Make sure they don’t cave inwards as this can strain your joints.
Better Core Stability
There are a lot of exercises to strengthen the core muscles and walking lunges is one of the best exercises for that. You increase your core’s stability by going through the up and down motion of walking lunges.
Having a strong core helps improve your posture. So doing walking lunges is also a great way to keep you from slouching which can cause back pain and more serious problems.
Relaxing The Spine
A lot of daily activities can strain your back. Even beneficial exercises such as weight lifting can put a strain on your back. If you are a weight lifter or if you just feel the need to rest and give your spine some recovery exercises, walking lunges are the ideal exercises to do.
Things To Consider
In order to attain these benefits, you have to learn the basic form first. Master the basic front lunge with proper form and you’ll be able to do a variety of lunges aside from walking lunges.
Apart from maximizing the benefits, learning the proper form can also prevent sprains and injuries. Your goal is to strengthen your body, not add unnecessary injury. With that, it pays to know how to execute the proper form from the start.
Conclusion
While they seem like a basic form of exercise, walking lunges are great because they target areas in your body that are often neglected in other types of exercises. As an added bonus, walking lunges can also work for different body types. They don’t require expensive equipment. All you need is space to move about 5 paces and you’re all good.
To make sure you feel your best and most energized during workouts, try incorporating Purisure’s Agmatine Powder into your pre-workout formula. Enhanced with Agmatine Sulfate, this powder supplementation increases blood flow which helps deliver essential nutrients to your muscles to sustain them during workouts.
References:
https://www.stylecraze.com/articles/benefits-of-walking-lunges/#gref
https://barbend.com/benefits-walking-lunges/
https://www.livestrong.com/article/336841-the-benefits-of-lunges/